Manual1 7 PDF

M IRtoo lb ox 1.
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User’s Manual
Olivier Lartillot
University of Oslo, Norway
Department of Musicology
olartillot@gmail.com
June, 3rd, 2017 
MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 1

TA B LE O F CONTENTS
Table of contents 2
1. Introduction 5
Conditions of Use 5
Please Register 5
Documentation and Support 5
Background 6
MIRtoolbox Objectives 7
MIRtoolbox Features 8
Installation 10
Help and demos 12
MIRtoolbox Interface 13
2. Basic Operators 19
miraudio 19
mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ 23
mirfilterbank 26
mirenvelope 30
mirspectrum 37
mircepstrum 46
mirautocor 50
* 57
mirflux 58
mirsum 62
mirpeaks 64
mirsegment 69
mirplay 72
mirplayer 74
mirsave 75
mirlength 77
3. Feature Extractors 78
3.1. Dynamics 78
mirrms 78
mirsegment(..., ‘RMS’) 80
mirlowenergy 81
3.2. Rhythm 83

mirfluctuation 83
mirbeatspectrum 86
mirevents (previously mironsets) 88
mireventdensity 96
mirtempo 97
mirmetre 104
mirmetroid 107
mirpulseclarity 109
3.3. Timbre 112
mirattacktime 112
mirattackslope 114
mirattackleap 116
mirdecaytime 118
mirdecayleap 120
mirdecayslope (previously mirdecreaseslope) 122
mirduration 124
mirzerocross 125
mirrolloff 127
mirbrightness 129
mircentroid, mirspread, mirskewness, mirkurtosis, mirflatness, mirentropy 131
mirmfcc 132
mirroughness 135
mirregularity 137
3.4. Pitch 139
mirpitch 139
mirmidi 144
mirinharmonicity 145
3.5. Tonality 147
mirchromagram 147
mirkeystrength 151
mirkey 154
mirmode 156
mirkeysom 158
mirtonalcentroid 160
mirhcdf 161
mirsegment(..., ‘HCDF’) 162
4. High-level features 163

4.1. Structure and form 163

mirsimatrix 163
mirnovelty 169
mirsegment(..., ‘Novelty’) 173
4.2. Statistics 175
mirmean 175
mirstd 175
mirmedian 175
mirstat 176
mirhisto 177
mirzerocross 178
mircentroid 179
mirspread 181
mirskewness 182
mirkurtosis 184
mirflatness 185
mirentropy 186
mirfeatures 188
mirmap 191
4.3. Predictions 194
miremotion 194
mirclassify 201
mircluster 202
4.4. Similarity and Retrieval 204
mirdist 204
mirquery 205
4.5. Exportation 206
mirgetdata 206
mirexport 208
5. Advanced use of MIRtoolbox 210

5.1. Parallel processing 210
5.2. Progressive storage of stats 211
5.3. Interface preferences 212
5.4. get213
5.5. Memory management 214
References 219

1 . IN T RODUCTI ON
Conditions of Use
The Toolbox is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of ver-
sion 2 of GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.
When MIRtoolbox is used for academic research, we would highly appreciate if scientific publi-
cations of works partly based on MIRtoolbox cite one of the following publications:
Olivier Lartillot, Petri Toiviainen, “A Matlab Toolbox for Musical Feature Extraction From Au-
dio”, International Conference on Digital Audio Effects, Bordeaux, 2007.
Olivier Lartillot, Petri Toiviainen, Tuomas Eerola, “A Matlab Toolbox for Music Information
Retrieval”, in C. Preisach, H. Burkhardt, L. Schmidt-Thieme, R. Decker (Eds.), Data Analysis,
Machine Learning and Applications, Studies in Classification, Data Analysis, and Knowledge Or-
ganization, Springer-Verlag, 2008.
For commercial use of MIRtoolbox, please contact the authors.
Please Register
Please register to the MIRtoolbox announcement list.
This will allow us to estimate the number of users, and this will allow you in return to get in-
formed on the new major releases (including critical bug fixes).
Documentation and Support

The URL of MIRtoolbox website is www.jyu.fi/music/coe/materials/mirtoolbox
MIRTOOLBOX DISCUSSION LIST

A discussion list is also available:
• To subscribe, send an empty mail with ‘Subscribe’ as subject to mirtoolbox-request@free-

lists.org
• The archive is available here.

MIRTOOLBOX TWEETS
Get informed of the day-to-day advance of the project (bug reports, bug fixes, new features,
new topics, etc.) by following @mirtoolbox.
TUTORIAL VIDEO
Video recordings of a tutorial given during SMC09 are available on YouTube.
Background
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Olivier Lartillot, Petri Toiviainen, Pasi Saari and Tuomas Eerola were members of the Finnish
Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research, University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
The development of the toolbox has benefitted from productive collaborations with:
• partners of the Brain Tuning project (Marco Fabiani, Jose Fornari, Anders Friberg, Roberto
Bresin, ...),
• colleagues from the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research (Martin Hart-
mann, Vinoo Alluri, Rafael Ferrer, Marc Thompson, Anemone Van Zijl, Iballa Burunat, Bir-
gitta Burger, Tiziana Quarto, ...),
• colleagues from the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences (Didier Grandjean, Klaus Scherer, Eduar-
do Coutinho, Donald Glowinski, Kim Eliard, Carolina Labbé, Johanna Wiebke Trost, Dona-
to Cereghetti, …),
• colleagues from the Department of Musicology of the University of Oslo (Kristian Nymoen,
Anne Danielsen, Alexander Refsum Jensenius, Rolf Inge Godøy, ...),
• students of the MMT master program (University of Jyväskylä, Finland) and of the SMC
master program (Aalborg University, Denmark),
• external collaborators: Jakob Abeßer (Fraunhofer IDMT), Thomas Wosch and associates
(MEM, FHWS), Cyril Laurier and Emilia Gomez, (MTG-UPF),
• active users of the toolbox, participating in particular to the discussion list,
• participants of summer schools: SMC Summer School 2007 and 2014, ISSSM 2007,
ISSSCCM 2009, USMIR 2010, ISSAS 2011 and 2012.

TUNING THE BRAIN FOR MUSIC
MIRtoolbox has been initially developed within the context of a Europeen Project called “Tun-
ing the Brain for Music”, funded by the NEST (New and Emerging Science and Technology) pro-
gram of the European Commission. The project, coordinated by Mari Tervaniemi from the
Cognitive Brain Research Unit of the Department of Helsinki, is dedicated to the study of mu-
sic and emotion, with collaboration between neurosciences, cognitive psychology and comput-
er science. One particular question, studied in collaboration between the Music Cognition
Team of the University of Jyväskylä and the Music Acoustics Group of the KTH in Stockholm,
is related to the investigation of the relation between musical features and music-induced emo-
tion. In particular, we would like to know which musical parameters can be related to the in-
duction of particular emotion when playing or listening to music. For that purpose, we needed
to extract a large set of musical features from large audio data-bases, in order to perform in a
second step a statistical mapping between the diverse musical parameters and musical materi-
als with listeners’ emotional ratings. This requires in particular a management of the interde-
pendencies between the diverse features – in order to avoid having to recompute the same op-
erations again and again – and also a control of the memory costs while analyzing the databas-
es.
MUSIC, MIND, TECHNOLOGY

Within the master degree, called Music Mind Technology (MMT) at the University of Jyväskylä,
the Music Information Retrieval course, previously taught by Olivier Lartillot, Petri Toiviainen
and others, offers an overview of computer-based research for music analysis and in particular
musical feature extraction. For the hands-on sessions, we wanted the student to be able to try
by themselves the different computational approaches using Matlab. As many of them did not
have much background in this programming environment, we decided to design a computa-
tional environment for musical feature extraction aimed at both expert and non-expert of Mat-
lab.
MIRtoolbox Objectives
Due to the context of development of this toolbox, we elaborated the following specifications:
GENERAL FRAMEWORK
MIRtoolbox proposes a large set of musical feature extractors.
MODULAR FRAMEWORK
MIRtoolbox is based on a set of building blocks that can be parametrized, reused, reordered,
etc.

SIMPLE AND ADAPTIVE SYNTAX
Users can focus on the general design, MIRtoolbox takes care of the underlying laborious tasks.
F R E E S O F T WA R E , O P E N S O U R C E
The idea is to propose to capitalize the expertise of the research community, and to offer it
back to the community and the rest of us.
MIRtoolbox Features
MIRtoolbox includes around 50 audio and music features extractors and statistical descriptors.
A brief overview of most of the features can be seen in the following figure.
mirrms mirlowenergy mirfeatures
mirgetdata
mirsav" mirzerocross mirsu! * mirpeaks mirpitch
mirinharmonicity mirexpor#
mir$lterban% mirautocor mirsu! mir)am" mirsu!
mirautocor
miraudio mirenvelop" mironsets * mirpeaks mirtempo
mirspectru!
mircepstru!
mirsegmen# mir)am" mir&ux mirspectru! mir&uctuatio* mirsu!
mirmfcc
mirspectru! mirsimatrix mirnovelty mirpeaks mirpeaks mirattackslop"
mirro'o( mirsta#
mirattacktim"
mircluster
mirzerocross
mirbrightness
mirhisto
mirclassify mirroughness
mirpeaks mircentroid
mirregularity mirspread
mirskewness
mirchromagra! mirkeystrength mirpeaks mirkey
mirkurtosis
mirmod" mir&atness
mirtonalcentroid mir&ux mirhcdf
mirkeyso!
Synthetic overview of the features available in MIRtoolbox 1.2 

MIRtoolbox Reliances
REQUIRED COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS

MIRtoolbox requires the Matlab environment, version 7, and does not work very well with
previous versions of Matlab. This is due in particular to the fact MIRtoolbox relies on multi-di-
mensional arrays and multiple outputs, which seem to be features introduced by version 7.
MIRtoolbox also requires that the Signal Processing Toolbox, one of the optional sub-pack-
ages of Matlab, be properly installed. But actually, a certain number of operators can adapt to
the absence of this toolbox, and can produce more or less reliable results. But for serious use of
MIRtoolbox, we strongly recommend a proper installation of the Signal Processing Toolbox.
MIRtoolbox also requires that the Statistics Toolbox (now called Statistics and Machine
Learning Toolbox), one of the optional sub-packages of Matlab, be properly installed. This is
needed for mirflux and for any other operator using that module.
FREE S O F T WA R E S I N C L U D E D I N T H E MIRTOOLBOX
DISTRIBUTION
MIRtoolbox includes in its distribution several other freely available toolboxes, that are used
for specific computations.
• The Auditory Toolbox, by Malcolm Slaney (1998), is used for Mel-band spectrum and MFCC
computations, and Gammatone filterbank decomposition.
• The Netlab toolbox, by Ian Nabney (2002), where the routines for Gaussian Mixture Model-
ing (GMM) is used for classification (mirclassify).
• Finally, the SOM toolbox, by Esa Alhoniemi and colleagues (Vesanto, 1999), where only a
routine for clustering based on k-means method is used, in the mircluster function.
CODE I N T E G R AT E D A S PA RT O F GPL PROJECT

MIRtoolbox license is based on GPL 2.0. As such, it can integrate codes from other GPL 2.0
projects, as long as their origins are explicitly stated.
• codes from the Music Analysis Toolbox by Elias Pampalk (2004), related to the computation of
Terhardt outer ear modeling, Bark band decomposition and masking effects. (GPL 2.0)
• implementation of Earth Mover Distance written by Yossi Rubner and wrapped for Matlab
by Simon Dixon.
• openbdf and readbdf script by T.S. Lorig to read BDF files, based on openedf and readedf by
Alois Schloegl.

CODE I N T E G R AT E D W I T H BSD LICENSE
• mp3read by Dan Ellis, which calls the mpg123 decoder and the mp3info scanner
• aiffread by Kenneth Eaton
• convolve2 by David Young
Installation
To install MIRtoolbox in your Matlab environment, move the main MIRtoolbox folder to the
location of your choice in your computer (for instance, in your Matlab "toolbox" folder, if you
have administrative rights to modify it). Then open the “Set Path” environment available in
Matlab File menu, click on “Add with Subfolders...”, browse into the file hierarchy and select the
main MIRtoolbox folder, then click “Open”. You can then “Save” and “Close” the Set Path envi-
ronment.
U P DAT E
If you replace an older version of MIRtoolbox with a new one, please update your Matlab path
using the following command:
rehash toolboxcache
Update also the class structure of the toolbox, either by restarting Matlab, or by typing the fol-
lowing command:
clear classes
MP3 READER FOR MAC OS X 64-BITS P L AT F O R M

The problem discussed in this section should not be an issue anymore if you use Matlab 2014a
or more recent with MIRtoolbox 1.6 or more recent. Because in that case, MIRtoolbox uses the
new audio reader introduced in Matlab. But beware that in this case you need to make sure
that you include the file extension of the audio file names you specify.
If you are running Matlab on a Mac OS X 10.6 or beyond and with Matlab release 2009 or
beyond, the binaries used for reading MP3 files (mpg123 and mp3info) needs to be in 64-bits
format (with the mexmaci64 file extension). Unfortunately, it seems that the mpg123.mexmaci64
and mp3info.mexmaci64 executable we provided in the MIRtoolbox distribution cannot be used
directly on other computers, so you need to install those binaries by yourselves on each sepa-
rate computer by doing the following:
• Install Apple’s Xcode:

• If you use Max OS X 10.7, you can download it from free on the Mac App Store. After ins-
talling Xcode, it is advised to install the Command Line Tools must be installed. This is
done from the Downloads section of Xcode's preferences.
• If you use Mac OS X 10.6, you need to be (freely) registered as an Apple Developer. We
suggest to download Xcode 3.2.6, as it is the latest free version available.
• Install MacPorts.
• Check that your MacPorts is up-to-date by executing in the Terminal:
sudo port -v selfupdate
(You need to authenticate as an administrative user.)
• Install mpg123 and mp3info via MacPorts by executing in the Terminal:
sudo port install mpg123
sudo port install mp3info
• Once both installations are completed, you should obtain among others two Unix executable
files called mpg123 and mp3info, probably located at the address /opt/local/bin.
• Create a copy of these files that you rename mpg123.mexmaci64 and mp3info.mexmaci64, and
place these two renamed files in a folder whose path is included in Matlab. You can for ins-
tance place them in your MIRtoolbox folder, which already contains Unix executable
mpg123.mexmaci and mp3info.mexmaci, which correspond to the 32-bit platform. If there alrea-
dy exists files called mpg123.mexmaci64 and mp3info.mexmaci64, you can replace those previous
files with the new ones you compiled yourself. 

Help and demos
To get an overview of the functions available in the toolbox, type:
help mirtoolbox
A short documentation for each function is available using the same help command. For ins-
tance, type:
help miraudio
DEMOS
Examples of use of the toolbox are shown in the MIRToolboxDemos folder:
• mirdemo
• demo1basics
• demo2timbre
• demo3tempo
• demo4segmentation
• demo5export
• demo6curves
• demo7tonality
• demo8classification
• demo9retrieval 

MIRtoolbox Interface
BASIC SYNTAX
All functions are preceded by the mir- prefix in order to avoid conflicts with other Matlab
functions. Each function is related to a particular data type: for instance, miraudio is related to
the loading, transformation and display of audio waveform. An audio file, let’s say a WAV file of
name mysong.wav, can be loaded simply by writing the command:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’)
The extension of the file should be indicated explicitly. In recent versions of Matlab, the fol-
lowing syntax:
miraudio(‘mysong’)
returns an error.
Operations and options to be applied are indicated by particular keywords, expressed as argu-
ments of the functions. For instance, the waveform can be centered using the ‘Center’ keyword:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’)
which is equivalent to any of these parameters:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘yes’)
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘on’)
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, 1)
whereas the opposite set of parameters
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘no’)
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘off ’)
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, 0)

are not necessary in the case of the ‘Center’ options as it is toggle off by default in miraudio.
It should be noted also that keywords are not case-sensitive:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘center’, ‘YES’)
Other options accept numerical particular parameters. For instance, an audio waveform can be
resampled to any sampling rate, which is indicated by a value in Hertz (Hz.) indicated after the
‘Sampling’ keyword. For instance, to resample at 11025 Hz., we just write:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Sampling’, 11025)
Finally the different options can be combined in one single command line:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘Sampling’, 11025)
B AT C H A N A LY S I S
• Folder of files can be analyzed in exactly the same way. For that, the file name, which was ini-
tially the first argument of the functions, can be replaced by the ‘Folder’ keyword. For in-
stance, a folder of audio files can be loaded like this:
miraudio(‘Folder’)
Only audio files in audio formats recognized by Matlab’s in-house audioread function are taken
into consideration, the other files are simply ignored:
Current Directory:
song1.wav
song2.wav miraudio(‘Folder’)
song3.au
non_audio.file
Automatic analysis of a batch of audio files using the ‘Folder’ keyword
• Subfolders can be analyzed recursively as well, using the ‘Folders’ keyword:
miraudio(‘Folders’)
• Alternatively, the list of audio files (with their respective path) can be stored in successive
lines of a TXT file, whose name (and path) can be given as input to miraudio:

miraudio(‘myfilenames.txt’)
• As another alternative, the list of audio files (with address relative to the current directory)
can be given in a cell array as first input to miraudio, for instance:
miraudio({‘song1.wav’, ‘song2.au’, ‘song3.mp3’})
OUTPUT F O R M AT
After entering one command, such as
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’)
the computation is carried out, and when it is completed, a text is written in the Command
Window:
ans is the Audio waveform related to file mysong.wav, of sampling

rate 44100 Hz.
Its content is displayed in Figure 1.
And a graphical representation of the result is displayed in a figure:
Display of a miraudio object

The display of the figures and the messages can be avoided, if necessary, by adding a semi-colon
at the end of the command:
miraudio(‘mysong.wav’);
The actual output is stored in an object, hidden by default to the users, which contains all the
information related to the data, such as the numerical values of the waveform amplitudes, the
temporal dates of the bins, the sampling rate, the name of the file, etc. In this way we avoid the
traditional interface in Matlab, not quite user-friendly in this respect, were results are directly
displayed in the Command Window by a huge list of numbers.
It is not possible to display MIRtoolbox results in the Matlab Variable Editor. If you try visual-
izing a MIRtoolbox variable listed in your Workspace window, for instance the audio waveform
in the previous example, you get the following text in the Variable Editor:
val is the Audio waveform related to file mysong.wav, of sampling

rate 44100 Hz.
To display its content in a figure, evaluate this variable directly

in the Command Window.
M U LT I P L E FILE OUTPUT
If we now analyze a folder of file:
miraudio(‘Folder’)
the results related to each audio file is displayed in a different figure, and messages such as the
following ones are displayed in the Command Window:
ans(1) is the Audio waveform related to file song1.wav, of sampling

rate 44100 Hz.
ans(2) is the Audio waveform related to file song2.wav, of sampling

rate 22050 Hz.
ans(3) is the Audio waveform related to file song3.au, of sampling

rate 11025 Hz.
and so on.
And the actual output is stored in one single object, that contains the information related to all
the different audio files.

THREADING O F DATA F L OW
The result of one operation can be used for subsequent operations. For that purpose, it is bet-
ter to store each result in a variable. For instance, the audio waveform(s) can be stored in one
variable a:
a = miraudio(‘mysong.wav’);
Then the spectrum, for instance, related to the audio waveform can be computed by calling
the function mirspectrum using simply the a variable as argument:
s = mirspectrum(a)
In this way, all the information necessary for the computation of the spectrum can be retrieved
from the hidden object, associated to the variable a, that contains the complex encapsulated
data.
Alternatively, the spectrum can be directly computed from a given audio file by indicating the
file name as argument of the mirspectrum function:
s = mirspectrum(‘mysong.wav’)
This second syntax, more compact, is generally recommended, because it avoids the decompo-
sition of the computation in several steps (a, then s, etc.), which might cause significant prob-
lems for long audio files or for folder of files. We will see in section 5.3 how to devise more sub-
tle datacharts that take into account memory management problems in a more efficient way.
SUCCESSIVE O P E R AT I O N S O N O N E S A M E DATA F O R-
M AT
When some data has been computed on a given format, let’s say an audio waveform using the
miraudio function:
a = miraudio(‘mysong.wav’);
it is possible to apply options related to that format in successive step. For instance, we can
center the audio waveform in a second step:
a = miraudio(a, ‘Center’);
which could more efficiently be written in one single line:

a = miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’);
GETTING N U M E R I C A L DATA
The numerical data encapsulated in the output objects can be recuperated if necessary. In par-
ticular, the main numerical data (such as the amplitudes of the audio waveform) are obtained
using the mirgetdata command:
mirgetdata(a)
the other related informations are obtained using the generic get method. For instance, the
sampling rate of the waveform a is obtained using the command:
get(a, ‘Sampling’)
More detailed description of these functions will be described in section 5, dedicated to ad-
vanced uses of MIRtoolbox.
SPEEDING UP MIRTOOLBOX
If you notice that MIRtoolbox takes too much time decomposing each files into a large sets of
chunks, with a large displays of messages of the form “Chunk 1/20…” for instance, you might
try to increase the chunk size by using mirchunklim (cf. section 5.5).

2. B A SI C OP ERATORS
MIRtoolbox basic operators concern the management of audio waveforms (miraudio, mirsave),
frame-based analysis (mirframe, mirflux), periodicity estimation (mirautocor, mirspectrum, mircep-
strum), operations related more or less to auditory modeling (mirenvelope, mirfilterbank), peak
picking (mirpeaks) and sonification of the results (mirplay).
miraudio
AUDIO WAV E F O R M
As explained previously, this operator basically loads audio files, displays and performs opera-
tions on the waveform.
ACCEPTED I N P U T F O R M AT S
• file name:
• if you use Matlab 2014a or more recent, and if you make sure that you include the
file extension when specifying the file name, then miraudio uses Matlab’s audioread,
which accepts a large range of audio file format. They are listed in this page: http://se.-
mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/audioread.html#inputarg_filename
• in the other cases, the accepted file format are WAV, MP3, AIFF and AU formats, as the
loading operations are based on the Matlab wavread and auread functions, on Dan Ellis’
mp3read and on Kenneth Eaton’s aiffread. But beware that the compiled files includ-
ed in MIRtoolbox distribution (for instance mp3read) do not necessarily corre-
spond to your platform. So you might get error when, for instance, trying to read a
MP3 file.
• miraudio object: for further transformations.
• Matlab array: It is possible to import an audio waveform encoded into a Matlab column
vector, by using the following syntax:
miraudio(v, sr)
where v is a column vector and sr is the sampling rate of the signal, in Hz. The default value for
sr is 44100 Hz.

T R A N S F O R M AT I O N OPTIONS
• miraudio(..., ‘Mono’, 0) does not perform the default summing of channels into one single
mono track, but instead stores each channel of the initial sound file separately.
• miraudio(..., ‘Center’) centers the waveform.
• miraudio(..., ‘Sampling’, r) resamples at sampling rate r (in Hz). It uses the resample function
from Signal Processing Toolbox.
• miraudio(..., ‘Normal’) normalizes with respect to RMS energy (cf. mirrms).
• miraudio(..., ‘Frame’, w, wu, h, hu) decomposes into frames. Cf. mirframe for an explanation of
the arguments (units can be omitted here as well). Default parameters: same as in mirframe,
i.e., 50 ms and half-overlapping.
EXTRACTION OPTIONS
• miraudio(..., ‘Extract’, t1, t2, u,f) extracts the signal between the dates t1 and t2, expressed in
the unit u.
• Possible units u = ‘s’ (seconds, by default) or u = ‘sp’ (sample index, starting from 1).
• The additional optional argument f indicates the referential origin of the temporal posi-
tions. Possible values for f:
• 'Start’ (by default),
• 'Middle’ (of the sequence),
• 'End’ of the sequence.
When using 'Middle’ or 'End’, negative values for t1 or t2 indicate values before the middle or
the end of the audio sequence. For instance: miraudio(..., ‘Extract’, -1, +1, ‘Middle’) extracts one
second before and after the middle of the audio file.
• Alternative keyword: ‘Excerpt’.
• miraudio(..., ‘Trim’) trims the pseudo-silence beginning and end off the audio file.
• miraudio(..., ‘TrimThreshold’, t) specifies the trimming threshold t. Silent frames are

frames with RMS energy below t times the medium RMS of the whole audio file. Default
value: t = 0.06.
• Instead of 'Trim’, 'TrimStart’ only trims the beginning of the audio file, whereas 'Trim-
End’ only trims the end.

• miraudio(..., ‘Channel’, c) or miraudio(.., ‘Channels’, c) selects the channels indicated by the
(array of) integer(s) c.
LABELING OPTION
miraudio(..., ‘Label’, lb) labels the audio signals following the name of their respective audio
files. lb is one number, or an array of numbers, and the audio signals are labelled using the sub-
string of their respective file name of index lb. If lb =0, the audio signal(s) are labelled using the
whole file name.
song1g.-
miraudio(‘Folder’, ‘Label’, lb) song2g.wav song3b.au
wav
lb = 6 ‘g’ ‘g’ ‘b’
lb = [5 6] ‘1g’ ‘2g’ ‘3b’
lb = {‘good’, ‘bad’} ‘good’ ‘bad’ ‘good’
Example of labelling of a folder of audio files
The labeling is used for classification purposes (cf. mirclassify and mirexport).
S U M M AT I O N
Audio signals can be superposed using the basic Matlab summation operators (+). For instance
let’s say we have two sequences:
a1= miraudio(‘melody.wav’);
a2= miraudio(‘accompaniment.wav’);
Then the two sequences can be superposed using the command:
a = a1+a2
When superposing miraudio objects, the longest audio are no more truncated, but on the con-
trary the shortest one are prolonged by silence. When audio have different sampling rates, all
are converted to the highest one.

ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
cf. §5.2 for an explanation of the use of the get method. Specific fields:
• ‘Time’: the temporal positions of samples (same as ‘Pos’),
• ‘Centered’: whether the waveform has been centered (1) or not (0),
• ‘NBits’: the number of bits used to code each sample,
• ‘Label’: the label associated to each audio file. 

mirframe vs. ‘Frame’
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
The analysis of a whole temporal signal (such as an audio waveform in particular) leads to a
global description of the average value of the feature under study. In order to take into account
the dynamic evolution of the feature, the analysis has to be carried out on a short-term window
that moves chronologically along the temporal signal. Each position of the window is called a
frame.
FLOWCHART INTERCONNECTIONS
mirframe accepts as input any temporal object:
• an audio waveform miraudio,
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword,
• an envelope mirenvelope,
• the temporal evolution of a scalar data, such as fluxes in particular (mirflux),
• in particular, event detection curves (mirevents) can be decomposed into frames as well.
SYNTAX
The frame decomposition can be performed using the mirframe command. The frames can be
specified as follows:
mirframe(x,..., ‘Length', w, wu):
• w is the length of the window in seconds (default: .05 seconds);
• u is the unit, either
• ‘s’ (seconds, default unit),
• or ‘sp’ (number of samples).
mirframe(x,'..., ‘Hop', h, hu):
• h is the hop factor, or distance between successive frames (default: half overlapping: each
frame begins at the middle of the previous frame)
• u is the unit, either

mirframe
• ‘/1’ (ratio with respect to the frame length, default unit)
• ‘%’ (ratio as percentage) frame decomposition

• ‘s’ (seconds)
• ‘sp’ (number of samples)
• or ‘Hz’ (hertz), i.e., number of frames per second: the exactness of the frame rate is en-
sured and may cause a slight fluctuation of the elementary hop distances.
h
)*+,-./0123-45
!($
!(#
!("
05:;,6*+2
!!("
!!(#
!!($
l
!!(%
! " # $ % & '
l
6,52.789
Frame decomposition of an audio waveform, with frane length l and hop factor h (represented here, follow-
ing the default unit, as a ratio with respect to the frame length).
These arguments can also be written as follows (where units can be omitted):
mirframe(x, w, wu, h, hu)
CHAINING O F O P E R AT I O N S
Suppose we load an audio file:
a = miraudio(‘mysong’)
then we decompose into frames
f = mirframe(a)
then we can perform any computation on each of the successive frame easily. For instance, the
computation of the spectrum in each frame (or spectrogram), can be written as:
s = mirspectrum(f)

THE ‘FRAME’ OPTION
The two first previous commands can be condensed into one line, using the ‘Frame’ option.
f = miraudio(‘mysong’, ‘Frame’)
and the three commands can be condensed into one line also using the ‘Frame’ option.
s = mirspectrum(‘mysong’, ‘Frame’)
The frame specifications can be expressed in the following way:
mirspectrum(..., ‘Frame’, l, ‘s’, h, ‘/1’)
It is also possible to specify just the hop factor using the following syntax:
mirspectrum(..., ‘Frame’, ‘Hop’, h, ‘/1’)
This ‘Frame’ option is available to most operators. Each operator uses specific default values for
the ‘Frame’ parameters. Each operator can perform the frame decomposition where it is most
suitable. For instance, as can be seen in mirevents feature map, the ‘Frame’ option related to the
mirevents operator will lead to a frame decomposition after the actual computation of the event
detection curve (produced by mirevents).
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘FramePos’: the starting and ending temporal positions of each successive frame, stored in
the same way as for ‘Data’ (cf. §5.2),
• ‘FrameRate’: the frame rate in Hertz, i.e. the number of frames computed for each second,
• ‘Framed’: whether the data has been decomposed into frames or not. 

mirfilterbank
F I LT E R B A N K DECOMPOSITION
It is often interesting to decompose the audio signal into a series of audio signals of different
frequency register, from low frequency channels to high frequency channels. This enables thus
to study each of these channels separately. The decomposition is performed by a bank of fil-
ters, each one selecting a particular range of frequency values. This transformation models an
actual process of human perception, corresponding to the distribution of frequencies into crit-
ical bands in the cochlea.
filter N
..
miraudio filter 2
filter 1
miraudio mirfilterbank
mirsegment
mirfilterbank accepts as input data type either:
• miraudio objects, where the audio waveform can be segmented (using mirsegment),
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword.
F I LT E R B A N K S E L E C T I O N
Two basic types of filterbanks are proposed in MIRtoolbox:
• mirfilterbank(..., ‘Gammatone’) carries out a Gammatone filterbank decomposition (Patterson

et al, 1992). It is known to simulate well the response of the basilar membrane. It is based on
a Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth (ERB) filterbank, meaning that the width of each band
is determined by a particular psychoacoustical law. For Gammatone filterbanks, mirfilterbank
calls the Auditory Toolbox routines MakeERBFilters and ERBfilterbank. This is the default
choice when calling mirfilterbank.

»y = ERBFilterBank([1 zeros(1,511)], fcoefs);
»resp = 20*log10(abs(fft(y')));
»freqScale = (0:511)/512*16000;
»semilogx(freqScale(1:255),resp(1:255,:));
»axis([100 16000 -60 0])
»xlabel('Frequency (Hz)');
»ylabel('Filter Response (dB)');
-20
-40
-60 2 3 4
10 10 10
A simple cochlear model can be formed by filtering an utterance with these filters. To
Ten ERB
convert this data into anfilters
imagebetween
we pass100
eachand
row8000Hz (Slaney, 1998)
of the cochleagram through a half-
wave-rectifier, a low-pass filter, and then decimate by a factor of 100. A cochleagram
of the ‘A huge tapestryf)hung
• mirfilterbank(...,'Lowest', in her hallway’
indicates utterance
the lowest from the
frequency f, TIMIT
in Hz.database
Default value: 50 Hz.
• mirfilterbank(..., ‘2Channels’) performs a computational simplification of the filterbank using

just two channels, one for low-frequencies, below 1000 Hz, and one for high-frequencies,
over 1000 Hz (Tolonen and Karjalainen, 2000). On the high-frequency channel is performed
an envelope extraction using a half-wave rectification and the same low-pass filter used for
the low-frequency channel. This filterbank is mainly used for multi-pitch extraction (cf. mir-
pitch).
High-pass Low-pass
filter HWR filter
1000-10000 Hz 70-1000 Hz
miraudio
Low-pass
filter
70-1000 Hz
Diagram of the two-channel filterbank proposed in (Tolonen and Karjalainen, 2000)
For these general type of filterbanks are chosen, further options are available:
• mirfilterbank(...,'NbChannels', N) specifies the number of channels in the bank. By default: N

= 10. This option is useless for ‘2Channels’.
• mirfilterbank(..., ‘Channel’, c) – or mirfilterbank(..., ‘Channels’,c) – only output the channels

whose ranks are indicated in the array c. (default: c = (1:N))
M A N UA L S P E C I F I C AT I O N S
mirfilterbank(...,'Manual', f) specifies a set of non-overlapping low-pass, band-pass and high-
pass eliptic filters (Scheirer, 1998). The series of cut-off frequencies f as to be specified as next
parameter.

• If this series of frequencies begins with -Inf, the first filter is low-pass.
• If this series of frequencies ends with Inf, the last filter is high-pass.
mirfilterbank(...,'Order', o) specifies the order of the filters. The default is set to o = 4 (Scheirer,
1998)
mirfilterbank(...,'Hop', h) specifies the degree of spectral overlapping between successive chan-

nels.
• If h = 1 (default value), the filters are non-overlapping.
• If h = 2, the filters are half-overlapping.
• If h = 3, the spectral hop factor between successive filters is a third of the whole frequency
region, etc.
P R E S E L E C T E D F I LT E R B A N K S
mirfilterbank(..., p) specifies predefined filterbanks, all implemented using elliptic filters, by de-
fault of order 4:
• p = ‘Mel’: Mel scale (cf. mirspectrum(..., ‘Mel’)).
• p = ‘Bark’: Bark scale (cf. mirspectrum(..., ‘Bark’)).
• p = ‘Scheirer’ proposed in (Scheirer, 1998) corresponds to 'Manual',[-Inf 200 400 800 1600 3200
Inf]
• p = ‘Klapuri’ proposed in (Klapuri, 1999) corresponds to 'Manual',44*[2.^ ([ 0:2, ( 9+(0:17) )/3 ]) ]

EXAMPLE
!3 Audio waveform
x 10
1
10 0 !3
!1 x 10
20 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
9 0
!2
0.010 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
8 0
!0.01
0.020 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
7 0
!0.02
0.020 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
6 0
!0.02
0.050 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
5 0
!0.05
0.10 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
4 0
!0.1
0.10 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
3 0
!0.1
0.050 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
2 0
!0.05
0.010 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
1 0
!0.01
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
mirfilterbank(‘ragtime.wav.wav’)
If the number of channels exceeds 20, the audio waveform decomposition is represented as a
single image bitmap, where each line of pixel represents each successive channel:
mirfilterbank(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘NbChannels’, 40) 

mirenvelope
AMPLITUDE ENVELOPE
From an audio waveform can be computed the envelope, which shows the global outer shape of
the signal. It is particularly useful in order to show the long term evolution of the signal, and
has application in particular to the detection of musical events such as notes.
Here is an example of audio file with its envelope:

Audio waveform
0.1
0.05
amplitude
!0.05
!0.1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
Audio waveform of ragtime excerpt

Envelope
0.025
0.02
0.015
amplitude
0.01
0.005
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
Corresponding envelope of the ragtime excerpt
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirenvelope
mirsegment

mirenvelope accepts as input data type either:
• miraudio objects, where the audio waveform can be segmented (using mirsegment) and/or
decomposed into channels (using mirfilterbank),
• any scalar object (i.e., where there is one numerical value associated to each successive frame,
such as mirflux, mirnovelty, etc.): in this case, the mirscalar object is simply converted into a
mirenvelope object. The advantages of this operation is that the resulting mirenvelope can be
further decomposed into frames, which would not have been possible using the mirscalar ob-
ject as it is already decomposed into frames.
PARAMETERS S P E C I F I C AT I O N
The envelope extraction is based on two alternate strategies: either based on a filtering of the
signal (‘Filter’ option, used by default), or on a decomposition into frames via a spectrogram
computation (‘Spectro’ option). Each of these strategies accepts particular options:
• mirenvelope(...,‘Filter’) extract the envelope through a filtering of the signal. (Default method.)
• First the signal can be converted from the real domain to the complex domain using a
Hilbert transform. In this way the envelope is estimated in a three-dimensional space de-
fined by the product of the complex domain and the temporal axis. Indeed in this repre-
sentation the signal looks like a “spring” of varying width, and the envelope would corre-
spond to that varying width. In the real domain, on the other hand, the constant crossing
of the signal with the zero axis may sometime give erroneous results.
An Hilbert transform can be performed in mirenvelope, based on the Matlab function

hilbert. In order to toggle on the Hilbert transform, the following keyword should be
added:
mirenvelope(..., ‘Hilbert’)
Beware however that, although sometimes the use of the Hilbert transform seems to im-
prove somewhat the results, and might in particular show clearer burst of energy, we no-
ticed some problematic behavior, in particular at the beginning and the end of the signal,
and after some particular bursts of energy. This becomes all the more problematic when
chunk decompositions are used (cf. §5.3), since the continuity between chunk cannot be
ensured any more. For that reason, since version 1.1 of MIRtoolbox, the use of Hilbert
transform is toggled off by default.
If the signal is in the real domain, the next step consists in a full-wave rectification, re-
flecting all the negative lobes of the signal into the positive domain, leading to a series of

positive half-wave lobes. The further smoothing of the signal (in the next step) will leads
to an estimation of the envelope. If on the contrary the signal is in the complex domain,
a direct estimation of the envelope can be obtained by computing the modulus, i.e., the
width of the “string”. These two operations, either from the real or the complex domains,
although apparently different, relate to the same Matlab command abs.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘PreDecim’, N) down-samples by a factor N>1, where N is an integer, be-

fore the low-pass filtering (Klapuri, 1999). Default value: N = 1, corresponding to no
down-sampling.
• The next step consists in a low-pass filter than retain from the signal only the long-term
mirenvelope
evolution, by removing all the more rapid oscillations. This is performed through a filter-
ing of the signal. Three types of filters are available:
• mirenvelope(..., ‘FilterType’, ‘IIR’) extracts the envelope using an auto-regressive filter

envelope extraction
of infinite impulse response (IIR). This is the default method.
Full-wave Low-Pass Down-

rectification Filter Sampling
Analytic
abs + 1-a N
signal
Magnitude z -1
Hilbert
a
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Hilbert’, ‘on’)

Detail of the ‘IIR’ envelope extraction process
The range of frequencies to be filtered can be controlled by selecting a proper value
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Tau’, .02): LPF time constant (in s.)

for the a parameter. Another way of expressing this parameter is by considering its
time constant. If we feed the filter with a step function (i.e. 0 before time 0, and 1 af-
LPF0),
ter time is the
zero-phased
time constant(using filtfilt from
will correspond to theSignal
time itProcessing
will take forToolbox)
the output to
reach 63 % of the input. Hence higher time constant means smoother filtering. The
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Down’, N) N=16

default time constant is set to .02 seconds and can be changed using the option:
mirenvelope(...,
Tzanetakis, Essl, Cook. Automatic Musical ‘Tau’, t)Of Audio Signals, ISMIR 2001.
Genre Classification
• mirenvelope(..., ‘FilterType’, ‘HalfHann’) extracts the envelope using a half-Hanning

(raised cosine) filter.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘FilterType’, ‘Butter’) extract the envelope using a Butterworth filter.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘CutOff’, c) controls the cut-off frequency, by default set to 37 Hz

(Nymoen et al., 2017).

• Once the signal has been smoothed, as there is a lot of redundancy between the succes-
sive samples, the signal can be down-sampled. The default parameter related to down-
sampling is the down-sampling rate N, i.e. the integer ratio between the old and the new
sampling rate. N is set by default to 16, and can be changed using the option:
mirenvelope(..., ‘PostDecim’, N)
Alternatively, any sampling rate r (in Hz) can be specified using the post-processing op-
tion ‘Sampling’.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Trim’): trims the initial ascending phase of the curves related to the transi-
tory state.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘PreSilence’) adds further silence at the beginning of the audio sequence.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘PostSilence’) adds further silence at the end of the audio sequence.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Spectro’) extracts the envelope through the computation of a spectrogram,

with frame size 100 ms, hop factor 10% and the use of Hanning windowing:
mirspectrum(..., ‘Frame’, .1, ‘s’, .1, ‘/1’, ‘Window’, ‘hanning’, b)
• mirenvelope(..., b) specifies whether the frequency range is further decomposed into bands
(cf. mirspectrum). Possible values:
• b = ‘Freq’: no band decomposition (default value),
• b = ‘Mel’: Mel-band decomposition,
• b = ‘Bark’: Bark-band decomposition,
• b = ‘Cents’: decompositions into cents.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Frame’,...) modifies the default frame configuration.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘UpSample’, N) upsamples by a factor N>1, where N is an integer. Default

value if ‘UpSample’ called: N = 2
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Complex’) toggles on the ‘Complex’ method for the spectral flux compu-
tation (cf. mirflux).
• mirenvelope(..., ‘PowerSpectrum’, 0) turns off the computation of the power of the spec-

trum.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Terhardt’) toggles on the ‘Terhardt’ operation (cf. mirspectrum).

• mirenvelope(..., ‘TimeSmooth’, n) toggles on and controls the ‘TimeSmooth’ operation.
(cf. mirspectrum).
• mirenvelope(..., ‘PreSilence’) adds further frames at the beginning of the audio sequence
by adding silence before the actual start of the sequence.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘PostSilence’) adds further frames at the end of the audio sequence by ad-
ding silence after the actual end of the sequence.
POST-PROCESSING OPTIONS
Different operations can be performed on the envelope curve:
• mirenvelope(...,‘Sampling’, r) resamples to rate r (in Hz). ‘PostDecim’ and ‘Sampling’ op-

tions cannot therefore be combined.
• mirenvelope(...,‘Halfwave’) performs a half-wave rectification on the envelope.
• mirenvelope(...,‘Center’) centers the extracted envelope.

Envelope
0.02
amplitude
!0.02
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
• mirenvelope(...,‘HalfwaveCenter’) performs a half-wave rectification on the centered enve-

lope.
Envelope (half!wave rectified)
0.02
amplitude
0.01
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
• mirenvelope(...,‘Log’) computes the common logarithm (base 10) of the envelope.
• mirenvelope(...,‘MinLog’, ml) selects the data in the logarithmic range [-ml dB, 0 dB],
where 0 dB corresponds to the maximal logarithmic amplitude, and excludes the data be-
low that range.
• mirenvelope(...,‘Mu’, mu) computes the logarithm of the envelope, before the eventual differen-
tiation, using a mu-law compression (Klapuri et al., 2006). Default value for mu: 100
• mirenvelope(...,‘Power’) computes the power (square) of the envelope.

• mirenvelope(...,‘Diff’) computes the differentiation of the envelope, i.e., the differences be-
tween successive samples.
!' *+,,-.-/0+10-2)-/3-456-
()$!
%
1764+0;2-
$
!
!$
! !"# $ $"# % %"# & &"# ' '"#
0+7-)89:
• mirenvelope(...,‘HalfwaveDiff’) performs a half-wave rectification on the differentiated enve-

lope.
!4 Envelope (half!wave rectified)
x 10
4
amplitude
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
• mirenvelope(...,‘Normal’) normalizes the values of the envelope by fixing the maximum value
to 1.
• If the audio signal is decomposed into segments, each segment is normalized individually.
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Normal’, ‘AcrossSegments’), on the contrary, normalizes across segments,

i.e., with respect to the global maxima across all the segments of that audio signal.
• mirenvelope(...,‘Lambda’, l) sums the half-wave rectified envelope with the non-differentiated

envelope, using the respective weight 0<l<1 and (1-l). (Klapuri et al., 2006).
• mirenvelope(...,‘Smooth’,o) smooths the envelope using a movering average of order o. The de-
fault value when the option is toggled on: o=30
• mirenvelope(...,‘Gauss’,o) smooths the envelope using a gaussian of standard deviation o sam-

ples. The default value when the option is toggled on: o=30
PRESELECTED MODEL
Complete (or nearly complete) model is available:
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Klapuri06’) follows the model proposed in (Klapuri et al., 2006). Il corre-
sponds to
e = mirenvelope(..., ‘Spectro’, ‘UpSample’, ‘Mu’, ‘HalfwaveDiff ’, ‘Lambda’, .8);

mirsum(e, ‘Adjacent’, 10)
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Time’: the temporal positions of samples (same as ‘Pos’),
• ‘DownSampling’: the value of the ‘PostDecim’ option,
• ‘Halfwave’: whether the envelope has been half-wave rectified (1) or not (0),
• ‘Diff’: whether the envelope has been differentiated (1) or not (0),
• ‘Centered’: whether the envelope is centered (1) or not (0),
• ‘Phase’: the phase of the spectrogram, if necessary. 

mirspectrum
FOURIER TRANSFORM
A decomposition of the signal (be it an audio waveform, or an envelope, etc.) along frequencies
can be performed using a Discrete Fourier Transform, which, for an audio signal x has for equa-
tion:
N
X1 2⇡i
Xk = xn e N kn , k = 0, . . . , N/2
n=0
This decomposition is performed using a Fast Fourier Transform by the mirspectrum function
by calling Matlab fft function. The graph returned by the function highlights the repartition of
the amplitude of the frequencies (i.e., the modulus of Xk for all k), such as the following:
Spectrum
1000
800
magnitude
600
400
200
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
frequency (Hz)
We can also obtain for each frequency the actual phase position (i.e., the phase of Xk), which
indicates the exact position of each frequency component at the instant t = 0. If the result of
the spectrum decomposition is s, the phase spectrum is obtained by using the command:
get(s, ‘Phase’)
mirfilterbank mirframe
miraudio mirspectrum mirspectrum
mirsegment mirevents
mirspectrum accepts as input data type either:
• miraudio objects, where the audio waveform can be segmented (using mirsegment), de-
composed into channels (using mirfilterbank), and/or decomposed into frames (using mir-
frame);

• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword;
• data in the detection curve category (cf. mirevents):
• mirenvelope objects, frame-decomposed or not,
• fluxes (cf. mirflux), frame-decomposed or not;
• mirspectrum frame-decomposed objects: by calling again mirspectrum with the ‘Along-

Bands’ option, Fourier transforms are computed this time on each temporal signal related to
each separate frequency bin (or frequency band, cf. below).
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirspectrum(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length
of 50 ms and half overlapping. For the specification of other frame configuration using addi-
tional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
The range of frequencies, in Hz, can be specified by the options:
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Min’, mi) indicates the lowest frequency taken into consideration, expressed
in Hz. Default value: 0 Hz.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Max’, ma) indicates the highest frequency taken into consideration, expressed
in Hz. Default value: the maximal possible frequency, corresponding to the sampling rate di-
vided by 2.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Window’, w) specifies the windowing method. Windows are used to avoid the
problems due to the discontinuities provoked by finite signals. Indeed, an audio sequence is
not infinite, and the application of the Fourier Transform requires to replace the infinite time
before and after the sequence by zeroes, leading to possible discontinuities at the borders.
Windows are used to counteract those discontinuities. Possible values for w are either w = 0
(no windowing) or any windowing function proposed in the Signal Processing Toolbox1 . Default
value: w = ‘hamming’, the Hamming window being a particular good window for Fourier
Transform.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘NormalInput’) normalizes the waveform between 0 and 1 before computing

the Fourier Transform.
1The list of possible window arguments can be found in the window documentation (help win-
dow).

• mirspectrum(..., ‘Phase’, ‘No’) does not compute the related FFT phase. The FFT phase is not
computed anyway whenever another option that will make the phase information irrelevant
(such as ‘Log’, ‘dB’, etc.) is specified.
RESOLUTION S P E C I F I C AT I O N
The frequency resolution of the spectrum directly depends on the size of the audio waveform:
the longer the waveform, the better the frequency resolution. It is possible, however, to in-
crease the frequency resolution of a given audio waveform by simply adding a series of zeros at
the end of the sequence, which is called zero-padding. Besides, an optimized version of the Dis-
crete Fourier Transform, called Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) can be performed if the length of
the audio waveform (including the zero-padding) is a power of 2. For this reason, by default, a
zero-padding is performed by default in order to ensure that the length of the audio waveform
is a power of 2. But these operations can be tuned individually:
• mirspectrum(...,‘MinRes’, mr) adds a constraint related to the a minimal frequency resolution,

fixed to the value mr (in Hz). The audio waveform is automatically zero-padded to the lowest
power of 2 ensuring the required frequency resolution.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘MinRes’, r, ‘ OctaveRatio’, tol): Indicates the minimal accepted resolution in

terms of number of divisions of the octave. Low frequencies are ignored in order to reach the
desired resolution. The corresponding required frequency resolution is equal to the differ-
ence between the first frequency bins, multiplied by the constraining multiplicative factor tol
(set by default to .75).
• mirspectrum(...,‘Res’, r) specifies the frequency resolution r (in Hz) that will be secured as
closely as possible, through an automated zero-padding. The length of the resulting audio
waveform will not necessarily be a power of 2, therefore the FFT routine will rarely be used.
• mirspectrum(...,‘Length’, l) specifies the length of the audio waveform after zero-padding. If

the length is not a power of 2, the FFT routine will not be used.
• mirspectrum(...,‘ZeroPad’, s) performs a zero-padding of s samples. If the total length is not a

power of 2, the FFT routine will not be used.
• mirspectrum(...,‘WarningRes’, mr) indicates a required frequency resolution, in Hz, for the

input signal. If the resolution does not reach that prerequisite, a warning is displayed.
Alternatively, the spectrum decomposition can be performed through a Constant Q Transform

instead of a FFT, which enables to express the frequency resolution as a constant number of
bins per octave:
• mirspectrum(...,‘ConstantQ’, nb) fixes the number of bins per octave to nb. Default value when
the ‘ConstantQ’ option is toggled on: nb=12 bins per octave.

Please note however that the Constant Q Transform is implemented as a Matlab M file, where-
as Matlab’s FFT algorithm is optimized, therefore faster.
• mirspectrum(...,‘Terhardt’) applies Terhardt (1979) outer ear model. The function is mainly
characterized by an attenuation in the lower and higher registers of the spectrum, and an
emphasis around 2–5 KHz, where much of the speech information is carried. (Code based on
Pampalk's MA toolbox).
• mirspectrum(..., ‘NormalLength’) normalises with respect to the duration (in s.) of the audio
input data.
• mirspectrum(…,‘Power’) computes the power spectral density (PSD):
N 2
X1 2⇡i
Xk = xn e N kn , k = 0, . . . , N/2
n=0
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Normal’) normalises with respect to the power spectrum, i.e., the summation of
the PSD over all frequencies.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘dB’) represents the power spectrum in decibel scale. For the previous example
we obtain the following spectrum:
Spectrum
30
20
10
magnitude
!10
!20
!30
!40
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
frequency (Hz)

• mirspectrum(..., 'dB', th) keeps only the highest energy over a range of th dB. For example if we
take only the 20 most highest dB in the previous example we obtain:
Spectrum
20
15
magnitude
10
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
frequency (Hz)
• mirspectrum(...,‘Resonance’, r) multiplies the spectrum curve with a resonance curve that em-
phasizes pulsations that are more easily perceived. Two resonance curves are available:
• r = ‘ToiviainenSnyder’ (Toiviainen & Snyder 2003), default choice, used for event detec-
tion (cf. mirtempo),
• r = ‘Fluctuation’: fluctuation strength (Fastl 1982), default choice for frame-decomposed

mirspectrum objects redecomposed in ‘Mel’ bands (cf. mirfluctuation).
• mirspectrum(...,‘Smooth’, o) smooths the spectrum curve using a moving average of order o.

Default value when the option is toggled on: o=10
• mirspectrum(...,‘Gauss’, o) smooths the spectrum curve using a gaussian of standard deviation o

samples. Default value when the option is toggled on: o=10
• mirspectrum(...,‘TimeSmooth’, o) smooths each frequency channel of a spectrogram using a

moving average of order o. Default value when the option is toggled on: o=10
FREQUENCY REDISTRIBUTION
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Cents’) redistributes the frequencies along cents. Each octave is decomposed
into 1200 bins equally distant in the logarithmic representation. The frequency axis is hence
expressed in MIDI-cents unit: to each pitch of the equal temperament is associated the cor-
responding MIDI pitch standard value multiply by 100 (69*100=6900 for A4=440Hz,
70*100=7000 for B4, etc.).
Spectrum
400
magnitude
200
0
0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
pitch (in midicents) 4
x 10
mirspectrum(‘ragtime.wav’,‘Cents’)

It has to be noticed that this decomposition requires a frequency resolution that gets higher
for lower frequencies: a cent-distribution starting from infinitely low frequency (near 0 Hz
would require an infinite frequency resolution). Hence by default, the cent-decomposition is
defined only for the frequency range suitable for the frequency resolution initially associated to
the given spectrum representation. Two levers are available here:
• If a minimal frequency range for the spectrum representation has been set (using the ‘Min’
parameter), the frequency resolution of the spectrum is automatically set in order to
meet that particular requirement.
Spectrum
400
magnitude
200
0
4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000
pitch (in midicents)
mirspectrum(‘ragtime.wav’,’Cents’,’Min’,100)
• By increasing the frequency resolution of the spectrum (for instance by using the ‘Res’ or
‘MinRes’ parameters), the frequency range will be increased accordingly.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Collapsed’) collapses the cent-spectrum into one octave. In the resulting
spectrum, the abscissa contains in total 1200 bins, representing the 1200 cents of one octave,
and each bin contains the energy related to one position of one octave and of all the multiple
of this octave.
Spectrum
200
magnitude
100
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Cents
mirspectrum(‘ragtime.wav’,’Cents’,’Min’,100,‘Collapsed’)
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Mel’) redistributes the frequencies along Mel bands. The Mel-scale of audito-
ry pitch was established on the basis of listening experiments with simple tones (Stevens and
Volkman, 1940). The Mel scale is now mainly used for the reason of its historical priority
only. It is closely related to the Bark scale. It uses the Mel-scale definition from the Auditory
Toolbox: 13 linearly-spaced filters (66.66 Hz2 between center frequencies) followed by log-
spaced filters (separated by a factor of 1.0711703 in frequency.)
2The Auditory Toolbox documentation erroneously indicates the double: 133.33 Hz between cen-
ter frequencies. But the figure in the documentation and the actual code uses 66.66 Hz.

• mirspectrum(..., ‘Bands’, b) specifies the number of band in the decomposition. By default b
= 40.
In our example we obtain the following:
Mel!Spectrum
10
magnitude
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Mel bands
The Mel-scale transformation requires a sufficient frequency resolution of the spectrum: as the
lower bands are separated with a distance of 66.66 Hz, the frequency resolution should be hi-
gher than 66.66 Hz in order to ensure that each Mel band can be associated with at least one
frequency bin of the spectrum. If the ‘Mel’ option is performed in the same mirspectrum com-
mand that performs the actual FFT, then the minimal frequency resolution is implicitly ensu-
red, by forcing the minimal frequency resolution (‘MinRes’ parameter) to be equal or below 66
Hz. If on the contrary the ‘Mel’ is performed in a second step, and if the frequency resolution
is worse than 66 Hz, then a warning message is displayed in the Command Window.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Bark’) redistributes the frequencies along critical band rates (in Bark). Mea-
surement of the classical "critical bandwidth" typically involves loudness summation experi-
ments (Zwicker et al., 1957). The critical band rate scale differs from Mel-scale mainly in that
it uses the critical band as a natural scale unit. The code is based on the MA toolbox.
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Mask’) models masking phenomena in each band: when a certain energy ap-
pears at a given frequency, lower frequencies in the same frequency region may be unheard,
following particular equations. By modeling these masking effects, the unheard periodicities
are removed from the spectrum. The code is based on the MA toolbox. In our example this
will lead to:

4 Bark!Spectrum
x 10
magnitude 2
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Bark bands
HARMONIC S P E C T R A L A N A LY S I S
A lot of natural sounds, especially musical ones, are harmonic: each sound consists of a series
of frequencies at a multiple ratio of the one of lowest frequency, called fundamental. Tech-
niques have been developed in signal processing to reduce each harmonic series to its funda-
mental, in order to simplify the representation. MIRtoolbox includes two related techniques for
the attenuation of harmonics in spectral representation (Alonso et al, 2003):
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Prod’, m) Enhances components that have harmonics located at multiples of

range(s) m of the signal's fundamental frequency. Computed by compressing the signal by a
list of factors m, and by multiplying all the results with the original signal. Default value is m
= 1:6. Hence for this initial spectrum:
Spectrum
1000
800
magnitude
600
400
200
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
frequency (Hz)
we obtain this reduced spectrum:

39 Spectrum
x 10
5
4
magnitude
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
frequency (Hz)
• mirspectrum(..., ‘Sum’, m) Similar idea using addition of the multiples instead of multiplication.
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Frequency’: the frequency (in Hz.) associated to each bin (same as ‘Pos’),

• ‘Magnitude’: the magnitude associated to each bin (same as ‘Data’),
• ‘Phase’: the phase associated to each bin,
• ‘XScale’: whether the frequency scale has been redistributed into cents – with (‘Cents(Collap-
sed)’) or without (‘Cents’) collapsing into one octave –, mels (‘Mel’), barks (‘Bark’), or not redis-
tributed at all (‘Freq’),
• ‘Power’: whether the spectrum has been squared (1) or not (0),
• ‘Log’: whether the spectrum is in log-scale (1) or in linear scale (0). 

mircepstrum
SPECTRAL A N A LY S I S O F S P E C T RU M
The harmonic sequence can also be used for the detection of the fundamental frequency itself.
One idea is to look at the spectrum representation, and try to automatically detect these peri-
odic sequences. And one simple idea consists in performing a Fourier Transform of the Fourier
Transform itself, leading to a so-called cepstrum (Bogert et al., 1963).
So if we take the complex spectrum (Xk in the equation defining mirspectrum), we can operate
the following chain of operations:
Fourier Phase (“Inverse”) Fourier

Log
transform
transform unwrap
(mirspectrum)
• First a logarithm is performed in order to allow an additive separability of product compo-

nents of the original spectrum. For instance, for the voice in particular, the spectrum is com-
posed of a product of a vocal cord elementary burst, their echoes, and the vocal track. In the
logarithm representations, these components are now added one to each other, and we will
then be able to detect the periodic signal as one of the components.
• Then because the logarithm provokes some modification of the phase, it is important to en-
sure that the phase remains continuous.
• Finally the second Fourier transform is performed in order to find the periodic sequences. As
it is sometime a little difficult to conceive what a Fourier transform of Fourier transform is
really about, we can simply say, as most say, that it is in fact an Inverse Fourier Transform (as
it is the same thing, after all), and the results can then be expressed in a kind of temporal
domain, with unit called “quefrency”.
For instance for this spectrum:

Spectrum
1000
800
magnitude
600
400
200
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000
frequency (Hz)
we obtain the following cepstrum:

Cepstrum
0.2
0.15
0.1
magnitude
0.05
!0.05
!0.1
!0.15
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
quefrency (s)
The cepstrum can also be computed from the spectrum amplitude only, by simply taking the
logarithm, and directly computing the Fourier transform.
Fourier (“Inverse”) Fourier

audio Abs Log
transform
transform
(mirspectrum)
In this case, the phase of the spectrum is not computed.

mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mircepstrum
mirsegment mirframe
mircepstrum accepts either:
• mirspectrum objects, or
• miraudio objects (same as for mirspectrum),
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mircepstrum(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length
PARAMETER S P E C I F I C AT I O N S
• mircepstrum(..., ‘Freq’): The results can be represented, instead of using the quefrency domain
(in seconds), back to the frequency domain (in Hz) by taking the inverse of each abscissae
value. In this frequency representation, each peak is located on a position that directly in di-
cates the associated fundamental frequency.
• mircepstrum(..., ‘Min', min) specifies the lowest delay taken into consideration, in seconds. De-
fault value: 0.0002 s (corresponding to a maximum frequency of 5 kHz). This default value is
not set to 0 s in order to exclude the very high peaks confined in the lowest quefrency re-
gion: these high peaks seem to come from the fact that the spectrum is a non-centered sig-
nal, thus with high (quasi-)stationary energy. However, the value can be forced to 0 using this
‘Min’ option.
• mircepstrum(..., ‘Max', max) specifies the highest delay taken into consideration, in seconds.
Default value: 0.05 s (corresponding to a minimum frequency of 20 Hz). This default value is
not set to Inf in order to exclude the very high peaks confined in the highest quefrency re-
gion: these high peaks seem to come from the fact that the spectrum is a highly variable sig-
nal, thus with high energy on its highest frequencies. However, the value can be forced to Inf
using this ‘Max’ option.

• mircepstrum(..., ‘Complex') computes the cepstrum using the complex spectrum. By default,
the cepstrum is computed from the spectrum amplitude only.
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Magnitude’: same as ‘Data’,
• ‘Phase’: the phase related to the magnitude,
• ‘Quefrency’: same as ‘Pos’,
• ‘FreqDomain’: whether the quefrency are in s. (0) or in Hz. (1). 

mirautocor
A U T O C O R R E L AT I O N FUNCTION
Another way to evaluate periodicities in signals (be it an audio waveform, a spectrum, an enve-
lope, etc.) consists in looking at local correlation between samples. If we take a signal x, such as
for instance this trumpet sound:
+,-./012345/67
!"%
27<=.8,-4
!!"%
!"#$% !"#& !"#&% !"#' !"#'% !"#( !"#(% !") !")!% !")*
8.7409:;
the autocorrelation function is computed as follows:
For a given lag j, the autocorrelation Rxx(j) is computed by multiplying point par point the sig-
nal with a shifted version of it of j samples. We obtain this curve:
Waveform autocorrelation
0.15
0.1
coefficients
0.05
!0.05
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
lag (s)
Hence when the lag j corresponds to a period of the signal, the signal is shifted to one period
ahead, and therefore is exactly superposed to the original signal. Hence the summation gives
very high value, as the two signals are highly correlated.

mirframe
mirfilterbank
mirevents
miraudio mirautocor
mirsegment
mirframe mirspectrum
mirautocor usually accepts either:
frame),
• mirspectrum objects,
• data in the event detection curve category (cf. mirevents):
• mirenvelope objects, frame-decomposed or not,
• fluxes (cf. mirflux), frame-decomposed or not,
• mirautocor objects, for further processing.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirautocor(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length
• mirautocor(..., ‘Min’, mi) indicates the lowest delay taken into consideration. Default value: 0 s.
The unit can be specified:
• mirautocor(..., ‘Min', mi, ‘s’) (default unit)
• mirautocor(..., ‘Min’, mi, ‘Hz’)

• mirautocor(..., ‘Max’, ma) indicates the highest delay taken into consideration. The unit can be
specified as for 'Min’. Default value:
• if the input is an audio waveform, the highest delay is by default 0.05 s (corresponding to
a minimum frequency of 20 Hz).
• if the input is an envelope, the highest delay is by default 2 s.
• mirautocor(..., ‘Normal’, n) specifies a normalization option for the cross-correlation (‘biased’,

‘unbiased’, ‘coeff ’, ‘none’). This corresponds exactly to the normalization options in Matlab xcorr
function, as mirautocor actually calls xcorr for the actual computation. The default value is ‘co-
eff ’, corresponding to a normalization so that the autocorrelation at zero lag is identically 1.
If the data is multi-channel, the normalization is such that the sum over channels at zero lag
becomes identically 1. Note however that the ‘coeff ’ routine is not used when the compression
(‘Compres’) factor k is not equal to 2 (see below).
• mirautocor(...,‘Freq’) represents the autocorrelation function in the frequency domain: the pe-
riods are expressed in Hz instead of seconds (see the last curve in the figure below for an il-
lustration).
• mirautocor(..., ‘NormalWindow’) divides the autocorrelation by the autocorrelation of the

window. Boersma (1993) shows that by default the autocorrelation function gives higher coef-
ficients for small lags, since the summation is done on more samples. Thus by dividing by the
autocorrelation of the window, we normalize all coefficients in such a way that this default is
completely resolved. At first sight, the window should simply be a simple rectangular window.
But Boersma (1993) shows that it is better to use ‘hanning’ window in particular, in order to
obtain better harmonic to noise ratio.
• mirautocor(..., ‘NormalWindow’, w) specifies the window to be used, which can be any

window available in the Signal Processing Toolbox. Besides w = ‘rectangular’ will not perform
any particular windowing (corresponding to a rectangular (“invisible”) window), but the
normalization of the autocorrelation by the autocorrelation of the invisible window will
be performed nonetheless. The default value is w = ‘hanning’.
• mirautocor(..., ‘NormalWindow’, ‘off ’) toggles off this normalization (which is ‘on’ by de-

fault).
• mirautocor(..., ‘Resonance’, r) multiplies the autocorrelation curve with a resonance curve that
emphasizes pulsations that are more easily perceived. Two resonance curves are proposed:
• r = ‘ToiviainenSnyder’ (Toiviainen & Snyder 2003) (default value if ‘Resonance’ option toggled
on),

• r = ‘vanNoorden’ (van Noorden & Moelants, 1999).
This option should be used only when the input of the mirautocor function is an amplitude en-
velope, i.e., a mirenvelope object.
• mirautocor(..., ‘Center’, c) assigns the center value of the resonance curve, in seconds.
Works mainly with 'ToiviainenSnyder' option. Default value: c = 0.5.
1 1
0.9
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.8
0.6
0.7 0.5
0.4
0.6
0.3
0.2
0.5
0.1
0.4 0
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6
lag, in s. lag, in s.
Resonance curves ‘ToiviainenSnyder’ (left) and ‘vanNoorden’ (right)
• mirautocor(..., ‘Halfwave’) performs a half-wave rectification on the result, in order to just

show the positive autocorrelation coefficients.
GENERALIZED AU T O C O R R E L AT I O N
mirautocor(..., ‘Compres’, k) – or equivalently mirautocor(..., ‘Generalized’, k) – computes the au-
tocorrelation in the frequency domain and includes a magnitude compression of the spectral
representation. Indeed an autocorrelation can be expressed using Discrete Fourier Transform
as
y = IDFT(|DFT(x)|^2),
which can be generalized as:
y = IDFT(|DFT(x)|^k),
Compression of the autocorrelation (i.e., setting a value of k lower than 2) are recommended in
(Tolonen & Karjalainen, 2000) because this decreases the width of the peaks in the autocorre-
lation curve, at the risk however of increasing the sensitivity to noise. According to this study, a
good compromise seems to be achieved using value k = .67. By default, no compression is per-
formed (hence k = 2), whereas if the ‘Compress’ keyword is used, value k = .67 is set by default if

no other value is indicated.
mirautocor(‘Cmaj.wav’, ‘Freq’)
mirautocor(‘Cmaj.wav’, ‘Freq’, ‘Compress’)
ENHANCED AU T O C O R R E L AT I O N
In the autocorrelation function, for each periodicity in the signal, peaks will be shown not only
at the lag corresponding to that periodicity, but also to all the multiples of that periodicity. In
order to avoid such redundancy of information, techniques have been proposed that automati-
cally remove these harmonics. In the frequency domain, this corresponds to sub-harmonics of
the peaks.
mirautocor(..., ‘Enhanced’, a): The original autocorrelation function is half-wave rectified, time-
scaled by factor a (which can be a factor list as well), and subtracted from the original clipped
function (Tolonen & Karjalainen, 2000). If the 'Enhanced' option is not followed by any value,
the default value is a = 2:10, i.e., from 2 to 10.
If the curve does not start from zero at low lags but begins instead with strictly positive values,
the initial discontinuity would be propagated throughout all the scaled version of the curve. In
order to avoid this phenomenon, the curve is modified in two successive ways:
• if the curve starts with a descending slope, the whole part before the first local minimum is
removed from the curve,
• if the curve starts with an ascending slope, the curve is prolonged to the left following the
same slope but which is increased by a factor of 1.1 at each successive bin, until the curve
reaches the x-axis.

See the figure below for an example of enhanced autocorrelation when computing the pitch
content of a piano Amin3 chord, with the successive step of the default enhancement, as used
by default in mirpitch (cf. description of mirpitch).
0.06 0.03
0.05 0.025
0.04
0.02
0.03
0.015
0.02
0.01
0.01
0 0.005
!0.01 0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014 0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014
0.03 0.03
0.025 0.025
0.02 0.02
0.015 0.015
0.01 0.01
0.005 0.005
0 0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014 0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014
0.03 0.03
0.025 0.025
0.02 0.02
0.015 0.015
0.01 0.01
0.005 0.005
0 0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014 0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014
0.025
0.02
coefficients
0.015
0.01
0.005
0
100 200 300 400 500 600
frequency (Hz)
fig 1: Waveform autocorrelation of a piano chord Amaj3 (blue), and scaled autocorrelation of factor 2 (red);
fig 2: subtraction of the autocorrelation by the previous scaled autocorrelation (blue), scaled autocorrela-
tion
fig 1: Waveform of factor 3 (red); fig 3: of
autocorrelation resulting
a pianosubtraction (blue), scaled
chord Amaj3 autocorrelation
(blue), of factor 4(red); figof4:factor
and scaled autocorrelation idem 2 (red);
for factor 5; fig 5: idem for factor 6; fig 6:idem for factor 7; fig 7: resulting autocorrelation curve in the #e-
fig 2: subtraction of the autocorrelation by the previous scaled autocorrelation (blue), scaled autocorrelation
quency domain and peak picking
of factor 3 (red); fig 3: resulting subtraction (blue), scaled autocorrelation of factor 4(red); fig 4: idem for
factor 5; fig 5: idem for factor 6; fig 6:idem for factor 7; fig 7: resulting autocorrelation curve in the frequen-
MIRtoolbox 1.5 User’s Manual" cy domain and peak picking 55

mirautocor(‘Cmaj.wav’, ‘Freq’, ‘Compress’, ‘Enhanced’,2:20)
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Coeff’: the autocorrelation coefficients (same as ‘Data’),
• ‘Lag’: the lags (same as ‘Pos’),
• ‘FreqDomain’: whether the lags are in s. (0) or in Hz. (1),
• ‘OfSpectrum’: whether the input is a temporal signal (0), or a spectrum (1),
• ‘Window’: contains the complete envelope signal used for the windowing,
• ‘Resonance’: indicates the resonance curve that has been applied, or empty string if no reso-
nance curve has been applied. 

*
COMBINING R E P R E S E N TAT I O N S
It is also possible to multiple points by points diverse spectral representations and autocorrela-
tion functions, the latter being automatically translated to the spectrum domain (Peeters,
2006). Curves are half-wave rectified before multiplication.
mirfilterbank mirsum
miraudio mirautocor *
mirsegment mirframe mirspectrum mircepstrum

mirflux
DISTANCE BETWEEN SUCCESSIVE FRAMES

Given a spectrogram:
s = mirspectrum(a, ‘Frame’)
we can compute the spectral flux as being the distance between the spectrum of each succes-
sive frames.
mirflux(s)
Spectral flux
0.03
coefficient value (in )
0.02
0.01
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
frames
The peaks in the curve indicate the temporal position of important contrast in the spectro-
gram.
In MIRtoolbox fluxes are generalized to any kind of frame-decomposed representation, for in-
stance a cepstral flux:
c = mircepstrum(a, ‘Frame’)

mirflux(c)
!4 Cepstrum flux
x 10
8
4
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
frames
mirsum
mirautocor
mirfilterbank
mircepstrum
miraudio mirframe mirmfcc

mirspectrum mirflux
mirsegment
mirchromagram mirkeystrength
mirtonalcentroid
mirflux usually accepts either:
• mirspectrum frame-decomposed objects.
composed into channels (using mirfilterbank). The audio waveform is decomposed into
frames if it was not decomposed yet. If the input is a miraudio object, the default flux is a
spectral flux: i.e., the audio waveform is passed to the mirspectrum operator before being fed
into mirflux.

• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword: same behavior than for miraudio objects;
• mirautocor frame-decomposed objects;
• mircepstrum frame-decomposed objects;
• mirmfcc frame-decomposed objects;
• mirchromagram frame-decomposed objects;
• mirkeystrength frame-decomposed objects.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirflux(..., ‘Frame’, ...) specifies the frame configuration, the default being a frame length of 50
ms and half overlapping. For the syntax, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
• mirflux(x, 'Dist’, d) specifies the distance between successive frames, among the list of dis-
tances available in pdist (cf. help pdist). Default distance: ‘Euclidean’.
• mirflux(..., 'Inc’): Only positive difference between frames are summed, in order to focus on
increase of energy solely. If toggled on, ‘Dist’ parameter can only accept ‘Euclidean’, ‘Cosine’ or
‘City’.
• mirflux(..., ‘Complex’), for spectral flux, combines the use of both energy and phase informa-
tion (Bello et al, 2004).
• mirflux(..., ‘SubBand’) decomposes first the input waveform using a 10-channel filterbank of
octave-scaled second-order elliptical filters, with frequency cut of the first (low-pass) filter at
50 Hz:
mirfilterbank(..., ‘Manual’, [-Inf 50*2.^(0:1:8) Inf], ‘Order’, 2)
Alluri and Toiviainen (2010, 2012) introduce this model, using a frame size of 25 ms and half-
overlapping, corresponding to the command:
mirflux(..., ‘SubBand’, ‘Frame’, .025)
The authors found that fluctuations in the lower channels, around 50 Hz ~ 200 Hz (sub-bands
2 and 3) represent perceived “Fullness”, and those around 1600 ~ 6400 Hz (sub-Bands 7 and 8)
represent perceived “Activity”.
Alternatively, other filterbanks proposed in mirfilterbank can be specified, using the syntax:
• mirflux(..., ‘SubBand’, ‘Gammatone’)

• mirflux(..., ‘SubBand’, ‘2Channels’)
POST-PROCESSING
• mirflux(..., ‘Halfwave’): performs a half-wave rectification on the result.
• mirflux(..., ‘Median’, l, C): removes small spurious peaks by subtracting to the result its medi-
an filtering. The median filter computes the point-wise median inside a window of length l (in
seconds), that includes a same number of previous and next samples. C is a scaling factor
whose purpose is to artificially rise the curve slightly above the steady state of the signal. If
no parameters are given, the default values are: l = 0.2 s. and C = 1.3
• mirflux(..., ‘Median’, l, C, ‘Halfwave’): The scaled median filtering is designed to be succeed-

ed by the half-wave rectification process in order to select peaks above the dynamic thresh-
old calculated with the help of the median filter. The resulting signal is called “detection func-
tion” (Alonso et al., 2003). To ensure accurate detection, the length l of the median filter must
be longer than the average width of the peaks of the detection function.

mirsum
SUMMATION O F F I LT E R B A N K C H A N N E L S
Once an audio waveform is decomposed into channels using a filterbank:
f = mirfilterbank(a)
Audio waveform (centered)

0.1
5 0
!0.1
10 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
4 0
!1
20 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
3 0
!2
50 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
2 0
!5
10 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
1 0
!1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
An envelope extraction, for instance, can be computed using this very simple syntax:
e = mirenvelope(f)
!3 Envelope
x 10
5
5
0
0.10 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
4 0.05
0
0.40 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
3 0.2
0
10 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
2 0.5
0
0.20 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
1 0.1
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
Then the channels can be summed back using the mirsum command:
s = mirsum(e)
Envelope
0.06
0.04
0.02
amplitude
!0.02
!0.04
!0.06
!0.08
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)

The summation can be centered using the command:
s = mirsum(..., ‘Center’)
The summation can be divided by the number of channels using the command:
s = mirsum(..., ‘Mean’)
SUMMARY O F F I LT E R B A N K C H A N N E L S
If we compute for instance an autocorrelation from the envelopes:
ac = mirautocor(e)
!10 Envelope autocorrelation

x 10
0.5
5 0
!0.5 !8
x 10
50 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
4 0
!5 x 10!6
10 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
3 0
!1 x 10!6
50 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
2 0
!5 x 10!7
20 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
1 1
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
Then we can sum all the autocorrelation using exactly the same mirsum command:
s = mirsum(e)
!6 Envelope autocorrelation
x 10
5
coefficients
!5
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4
lag (s)
This summation of non-temporal signals across channels is usually called summary.  

mirpeaks
PEAK PICKING
Peaks (or important local maxima) can be detected automatically from any data x produced in
MIRtoolbox using the command
mirpeaks(x)
If x is a curve, peaks are represented by red circles:

Mel!Spectrum
20
15
magnitude
10
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Mel bands
If x is a frame-decomposed matrix, peaks are represented by white crosses:

()*!+,)-./01
'!
&!
()*4836=;
%!
$!
!"# $ $"# % %"# & &"# '

.)1,2/3*4*2-3.52642748)956656942747/31)4:564;"<
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Total’, m): only the m highest peaks are selected. If m = Inf, no limitation of num-
ber of peaks. Default value: m = Inf
• Border effects can be specified:
• mirpeaks(..., ‘NoBegin’) does not consider the first sample as a possible peak candidate.
• mirpeaks(..., ‘NoEnd’) does not consider the last sample as a possible peak candidate.
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Order’, o) specifies the ordering of the peaks.
• o = ‘Amplitude’ orders the peaks from highest to lowest (Default choice.)
• o = ‘Abscissa’ orders the peaks along the abscissa axis.

• mirpeaks(..., ‘Valleys') detect valleys (local minima) instead of peaks.
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Contrast’, cthr): A given local maximum will be considered as a peak if the differ-
ence of amplitude with respect to both the previous and successive local minima (when they
exist) is higher than the threshold cthr. This distance is expressed with respect to the total
amplitude of the input signal: a distance of 1, for instance, is equivalent to the distance be-
tween the maximum and the minimum of the input signal. Default value: cthr = 0.1
'()!*+(,-./0
$! 1
#" OK * OK
03748-/5(
#!
"
not OK * OK
c
!
! " #! #" $! $" %! %" 0 &!
'()123456
• mirpeaks(..., ‘SelectFirst’, fthr): If the 'Contrast' selection has been chosen, this additional op-
tion specifies that when one peak has to be chosen out of two candidates, and if the differ-
ence of their amplitude is below the threshold thr, then the most ancien one is selected. Op-
tion toggled off by default. Default value if toggled on: fthr = cthr/2
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Threshold’, thr): A given local maximum will be considered as a peak if its nor-
malized amplitude is higher than this threshold thr. A given local minimum will be consid-
ered as a valley if its normalized amplitude is lower than this threshold. The normalized am-
plitude can have value between 0 (the minimum of the signal in each frame) and 1 (the max-
imum in each frame). Default value: thr=0 for peaks, thr = 1 for valleys.
'()!*+(,-./0
$! 1
#"
03748-/5(
#!
t
"
!
! " #! #" $! $" %! %" &!
'()123456
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Interpol’, i) estimates more precisely the peak position and amplitude using in-
terpolation. Performed only on data with numerical abscissae axis.
• i = '', ‘no’, ‘off’, 0: no interpolation
• i = 'Quadratic': quadratic interpolation. (default value).

• mirpeaks(..., ‘Reso’, r) removes peaks whose abscissa distance to one or several higher peaks is
lower than a given threshold. Possible value for the threshold: r = 'SemiTone’: ratio between
the two peak positions equal to 2^(1/12). By default, out of two conflicting peaks, the higher
peak remains. If the keyword ‘First’ is added, the peak with lower abscissa value remains in-
stead.
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Pref’, c, std) indicates a region of preference for the peak picking, centered on the
abscissa value c, with a standard deviation of std.
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Nearest’, t, s) takes the peak nearest a given abscissa values t. The distance is
computed either on a linear scale (s = 'Lin’) or logarithmic scale (s = 'Log’). When using the
‘Nearest’ option, only one peak is extracted.
The ‘Total’ parameter can then be used to indicate the number of peaks to preselect be-
fore the ‘Nearest’ selection. If ‘Total’ was still set to 1, it is then ignored – i.e., forced to Inf – in
order to preselect all possible peaks.
• mirpeaks(..., 'Normalize’, n) specifies whether frames are normalized globally or individually.
• n = 'Global’ normalizes across the whole frames (as well as across the whole segments) of
each audio file from 0 to 1 (default choice).
• n = 'Local’: normalizes each segment, each frame, from 0 to 1 separately.
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Extract’) extracts from the curves all the positive continuous segments (or
"curve portions") where peaks are located. First, a low-pass filtered version of the curve is
computed, on which the temporal span of the positive lobes containing each peak are stored.
The output consists of the part of the original non-filtered curve corresponding to the same
temporal span. For instance:
ac = mirautocor('ragtime.wav')
1
coefficients
0.5
!0.5
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
lag (s)
mirpeaks(ac, ‘Extract’)

1
coefficients
0.5
!0.5
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
lag (s)
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Only’), keeps from the original curve only the data corresponding to the peaks,
and zeroes the remaining data.
mirpeaks(ac, ‘Only’)
1
0.8
coefficients
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
lag (s)
• mirpeaks(..., ‘Track’, t), where the input is some frame-decomposed vectorial data – such as
spectrogram, for instance –, tracks peaks along time using McAulay & Quatieri’s (1986) me-
thod: lines are drawn between contiguous temporal series of peaks that are sufficiently ali-
gned. If a value t is specified, the variation between successive frames is tolerated up to t, ex-
pressed using the abscissae unit. For instance, the figure below shows the result (zoomed) of the
following commands:
s = mirspectrum(‘trumpet’, ‘Frame’);
mirpeaks(s, ‘Track’, 25)
• mirpeaks(..., ‘CollapseTracks’, t), collapses tracks into one single track, and remove small
track transitions, of length shorter than ct samples. Default value: ct = 7.

ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘PeakPos’: the abscissae position of the detected peaks, in sample index,
• ‘PeakPosUnit’: the abscissae position of the detected peaks, in the default abscissae repre-
sentation,
• ‘PeakPrecisePos’: a more precise estimation of the abscissae position of the detected peaks
computed through interpolation, in the default abscissae representation,
• ‘PeakVal’: the ordinate values associated to the detected peaks,
• ‘PeakPreciseVal’: a more precise estimation of the ordinate values associated to the detected
peaks, computed through interpolation,
• ‘PeakMode’: the mode values associated to the detected peaks,
• ‘TrackPos’: the abscissae position of the peak tracks, in sample index,
• ‘TrackPosUnit’: the abscissae position of the peak tracks, in the default abscissae represen-
tation,
• ‘TrackVal’: the ordinate values of the peak tracks..

mirsegment
S E G M E N TAT I O N
• An audio waveform a can be segmented using the output p of a peak picking from data re-
sulting from a itself, using the following syntax:
sg = mirsegment(a, p)
a p
miraudio mirpeaks
mirsegment
If p is a frame-decomposed scalar curve, the audio waveform a will be segmented at the middle
of each frame containing a peak.
• An audio waveform a can be segmented at the beginning of the pitch events detected using
mirpitch:
p = mirpitch(a, ‘Frame’, ‘Segment’, ...)
sg = mirsegment(a, p)
• An audio waveform a can also be segmented manually, based on temporal position directly
given by the user, in the form:
sg = mirsegment(a, v)
where v is an array of numbers corresponding to time positions in seconds.
If a is a set of N audio waveforms, and if v is a matrix of N columns, then each column i indi-
cates the segmentation points for the waveform i. If v has only one column, then all waveforms
use that same column of segmentation points.
• A segmented audio waveform a can be further segmented manually, based on temporal posi-
tion directly given by the user, in the form:
sg = mirsegment(a, v)

where v is a cell array, where each cell, corresponding to one audio file, is itself a cell array,
where each cell, corresponding to one segment, is an array of numbers corresponding to time
positions in seconds.
• Automated segmentation methods are provided as well, that can be called using the syntax:
sg = mirsegment(a, m)
where m is the name of one of the following segmentation methods: ‘Novelty’ (default, cf. mir-
novelty), ‘HCDF’ (cf. mirhcdf) or ‘RMS’ (cf. mirrms).
mirsegment accepts uniquely as main input a miraudio objects not frame-decomposed, not
channel decomposed, and not already segmented. Alternatively, file name or the ‘Folder’ key-
word can be used as well.
The first argument of the mirsegment function is the audio file that needs to be segmented. It is
possible for instance to compute the segmentation curve using a downsampled version of the
signal and to perform the actual segmentation using the original audio file.
EXAMPLE
sg = mirsegment(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘Novelty’, ‘KernelSize’, 32)
Audio waveform
0.1
0.05
amplitude
!0.05
!0.1
0 1 2 3 4 5
time (s)
The output can be sent to any further analysis, for instance:
sp = mirspectrum(sg, ‘dB’)

ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
cf. §5.2 for an explanation of the use of the get method.
• ‘FramePos’: For segmented data, this returns a cell array where each cell is a matrix contai-
ning the starting and ending temporal positions of the frames in each successive segment.
When there is no frame decomposition, each cell contains simply the starting and ending
time of each successive segment. 

mirplay
S O N I F I C AT I O N O F T H E R E S U LT
Certain classes of temporal data can be sonified:
• miraudio objects: the waveform is directly played, and
• if the audio waveform is segmented (using mirsegment), segments are played successively
with a short burst of noise in-between;
• if the audio waveform is decomposed into channels (using mirfilterbank), channels are
played successively from low to high register;
• if the audio is decomposed into frames (using mirframe), frames are played successively;
• mirenvelope objects (frame-decomposed or not) are sonified using a white noise modulated
in amplitude by the envelope, and
• if peaks have been picked on the envelope curve (using mirpeaks), they are sonified us-
ing a short impulse sound;
• mirpitch results: each extracted frequency is sonified using a sinusoid.
mirau- mirplay
mirsegment mirenvelope mirframe
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirplay(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
50 ms and half overlapping. For the specification of other frame configuration using additional
parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
OPTIONS
• mirplay(..., 'Channel’, i) plays the channel(s) of rank(s) indicated by the array i.
• mirplay(..., 'Segment’, k) plays the segment(s) of rank(s) indicated by the array k.

• mirplay(..., 'Sequence’, l) plays a sequence of audio files using the order indicated by the array
l.
• mirplay(..., 'Increasing’, d) plays the sequences in increasing order of d, which can be either
an array of number or a mirscalar data (i.e., a scalar data returned by MIRtoolbox).
• mirplay(..., 'Decreasing’, d) plays the sequences in decreasing order of d, which can be either
an array of number or a mirscalar data (i.e., a scalar data returned by MIRtoolbox).
• mirplay(..., 'Every’, s) plays every s sequence, where s is a number indicating the step between
sequences.
• mirplay(...,‘Burst’, ‘No’) toggles off the burst sound between segments.
Example:
e = mirenvelope('Folder');
rms = mirrms('Folder');
mirplay(e, 'increasing', rms, 'every',5) 

mirplayer
GRAPHICAL P L AY E R I N T E R FA C E
mirplayer(features) opens a GUI showing the graphical representation of the MIRtoolbox object
features. features is a mirtoolbox object such as mirstruct or mirscalar, or a nested MATLAB
structure of mirtoolbox objects.
mirplayer(features, select) displays only songs specified by an array of song indices select.
EXAMPLES
The examples assume that the folder MIRToolboxDemos is in the MATLAB path.
b = mirbrightness('ragtime.wav','Frame');
mirplayer(b)
features.brightness = mirbrightness('ragtime.wav','Frame');
features.filterbank = mirfilterbank('ragtime.wav');
mirplayer(features)
features = mirfeatures('ragtime.wav');
mirplayer(features)
a = miraudio('ragtime.wav');
mirplayer(a)
Display only the first and the fifth audio file:
mirplayer(features,[1,5]) 

mirsave
S AV I N G AUDIO RENDERING INTO FILES

Certain classes of temporal data can be saved:
• miraudio objects: the waveform is directly saved, and
• if the audio waveform is segmented (using mirsegment), segments are concatenated with
a short burst of noise in-between;
• if the audio waveform is decomposed into channels (using mirfilterbank), each channel
is saved in a separate file;
• if the audio is decomposed into frames (using mirframe), frames are concatenated;
• mirenvelope objects (frame-decomposed or not) are sonified using a white noise modulated
in amplitude by the envelope,
• mirpitch results: each extracted frequency is sonified using a sinusoid.
mirau- mirsave
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirsave(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
OPTIONS
• The name and extension of the saved file can be specified in different ways, as shown in the
tables below.
• By default, the files are saved in WAV format, using the extension ‘.mir.sav’ in order to
lower the risk of overwriting original audio files.

• If the string ‘.au’ is indicated as second argument of mirsave, the audio will be saved in
AU format.
• A string can be indicated as second argument of mirsave.
• If the miraudio object to be saved contains only one audio file, the specified string will
be used as the name of the new audio file.
• If the miraudio object to be saved contains several audio files, the specified string will
be concatenated to the original name of each audio file.
• If the second argument of mirsave is a string ended by ‘.au’, the file name will follow the
convention explained in the previous point, and the files will be saved in AU format.
a = miraudio(‘mysong.au’) mysong.au
Diverse ways of saving into an
mirsave(a) mysong.mir.wav
audio file
mirsave(a,‘new’) new.wav
mirsave(a,‘.au’) mysong.mir.au
mirsave(a,‘new.au’) new.au
a = miraudio(‘Folder’) song1.wav song2.wav song3.au
mirsave(a) song1.mir.wav song2.mir.wav song3.mir.wav
mirsave(a,‘new’) song1new.wav song2new.wav song3new.wav
mirsave(a,‘.au’) song1.mir.au song2.mir.au song3.mir.au
mirsave(a,‘new.au’) song1new.au song2new.au song3new.au
Diverse ways of saving as a batch of audio files
• mirsave(a, filename, ‘SeparateChannels’) save each separate channel in a different file. The
channel number is added to the file name, before any file extension.
• mirsave(a, filename, ‘SeparateSegments’) save each separate segment in a different file. The
segment number is added to the file name, before any file extension. 

mirlength
TEMPORAL LENGTH OF SEQUENCES

mirlength returns the temporal length of the temporal sequence given in input, which can be
either an audio waveform (miraudio) or an envelope curve (mirenvelope). If the input was de-
composed into segments (mirsegment), mirlength returns a curve indicating the series of tempo-
ral duration associated with each successive segment.
mirau- mirlength
OPTIONS
• mirlength(..., ‘Unit’, u) specifies the length unit. The possible values are:
• u = ‘Second’: duration in seconds (Default choice).
• u = ‘Sample’: length in number of samples.

3 . F EAT URE EX TRACTORS
The musical feature extractors can be organized along main musical dimensions: dynamics,
rhythm, timbre, pitch and tonality.
3.1. Dynamics
mirrms
R O O T - M E A N - S Q UA R E ENERGY
The global energy of the signal x can be computed simply by taking the root average of the
square of the amplitude, also called root-mean-square (RMS):
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirrms
mirsegment mirframe
mirrms accepts as input data type either:
frame),
• other vectorial objects, such as mirspectrum, are accepted as well, although a warning is dis-
played in case this particular configuration was unintended, i.e., due to an erroneous script.
The following command orders the computation of the RMS related to a given audio file:

mirrms(‘ragtime.wav’)
which produce the resulting message in the Command Window:
The RMS energy related to file ragtime.wav is 0.017932
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirrms(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
For instance:
mirrms(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘Frame’)
we obtain a temporal evolution of the energy:

RMS energy
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
frames
We can note that this energy curve is very close to the envelope:
Envelope
0.025
0.02
0.015
amplitude
0.01
0.005
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
OPTIONS
• mirrms(..., 'Median’) replaces the mean by the median, corresponding to what could be called
a “root-median-square”.
• mirrms(..., 'Warning’, 0) toggles off the warning message, explained above, i.e., when the in-
put is a vectorial data that is not a miraudio object. 

mirsegment(..., ‘RMS’)
Segmentation at positions of long silences. A frame decomposed RMS is computed using mir-
rms (with default options), and segments are selected from temporal positions where the RMS
rises to a given ‘On’ threshold, until temporal positions where the RMS drops back to a given
‘Off’ threshold.
OPTIONS
• mirsegment(...,‘Off’, t1) specifies the RMS ‘Off’ threshold. Default value: t1 = .01
• mirsegment(...,‘On’, t2) specifies the RMS ‘On’ threshold. Default value: t2 = .02
mirsegment
miraudio mirframe mirrms
mirfilterbank
mirsegment(..., ‘RMS’) can return several outputs:
1. the segmented audio waveform itself,
2. the RMS curve (mirrms). 

mirlowenergy
DESCRIPTION
The energy curve can be used to get an assessment of the temporal distribution of energy, in
order to see if its remains constant throughout the signal, or if some frames are more con-
trastive than others. One way to estimate this consists in computing the low energy rate, i.e.
the percentage of frames showing less-than-average energy (Tzanetakis and Cook, 2002).
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirframe mirrms mirlowenergy
mirsegment
mirlowenergy accepts as input data type either:
• mirrms frame-decomposed data,
composed into channels (using mirfilterbank). The audio waveform is decomposed into
frames if it was not decomposed yet.
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword: same behavior than for miraudio objects.
mirlowenergy can return several outputs:
1. the low-energy rate itself and
2. the mirrms frame-decomposed data.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirlowenergy(..., ‘Frame’, ...) specifies the frame configuration, with by default a frame length of
50 ms and half overlapping. For the syntax, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
EXAMPLES
If we take for instance this energy curve:
r1 = mirrms(‘a1’, ‘Frame’)

RMS energy
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
frames
We can see that due to some rare frames containing particularly high energy, most of the
frames are below the average RMS. And indeed if we compute the low-energy rate
mirlowenergy(r1)
we obtain the value 0.71317.
For this opposite example:
r2 = mirrms(‘a2’, ‘Frame’)
RMS energy
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
frames
there are two kind of frames basically, those that have quite constant high energy, and fewer
that have very low energy. Hence most of the frames are over the average energy, leading to a
low low-energy rate:
mirlowenergy(r2)
equal to 0.42398.
OPTIONS
• mirlowenergy(..., 'Threshold’, t) expressed as a ratio to the average energy over the frames.
Default value: t = 1
• mirlowenergy(..., ‘ASR’) computes the Average Silence Ratio (Feng, Zhuang, Pan, 2003), which
corresponds to a RMS without the square-root, and a default threshold set to t = .5 

3.2. Rhythm
The estimation of rhythmicity in the audio signal can be performed using the basic operators
we introduced previously.
mirfluctuation
RHYTHMIC P E R I O D I C I T Y A L O N G AU D I T O RY C H A N-
NELS
One way of estimating the rhythmic is based on spectrogram computation transformed by au-
ditory modeling and then a spectrum estimation in each band (Pampalk et al., 2002).
The implementation proposed in MIRtoolbox includes a subset of the series of operations pro-
posed in Pampalk et al.:
1. First a power spectrogram is computed
• on frames of 23 ms with a hop rate hr, set by default to 80 Hz, but is automatically raised
to the double of the maximum fluctuation frequency range m, used in step 2.
• The Terhardt outer ear modeling is computed.
• A multi-band redistribution of the energy is performed along the ‘Bark’ bands decompo-
sition.
• mirfluctuation(..., ‘Mel’) performs a decomposition into 40 Mel bands instead of 20

Bark bands.
• Masking effects are estimated on the multi-band distribution.
• Finally the amplitudes are represented in dB scale.
This is summarized in one MIRtoolbox command line:
s = mirspectrum(..., ‘Frame’, .023, ‘s’, hr, ‘Hz’,...
‘Power’, ‘Terhardt’, b, ‘Mask’, ‘dB’)
where b is either ‘Bark’ or ‘Mel’.

2. Then a FFT is computed on each band:
• Frequencies range from 0 to m Hz, where m is set by default to 10 Hz can be controlled

by a ‘Max’ option: mirfluctuation(..., ‘Max’, m)
• The frequency resolution of the FFT mr is set by default to .01 Hz and can also be con-
trolled by a ‘MinRes’ option: mirfluctuation(..., ‘MinRes’, mr)
• The amplitude modulation coefficients are weighted based on the psychoacoustic model
of the fluctuation strength (Fastl, 1982).
This is summarized in one MIRtoolbox command line:
f = mirspectrum(s, ‘AlongBands’, ‘Max’, m, ‘MinRes’, mr, ‘Window’, 0, ...
‘Resonance’, ‘Fluctuation’, ‘NormalLength’)
We can see in the matrix the rhythmic periodicities for each different Bark band.
3. mirfluctuation(..., ‘Summary’) subsequently sums the resulting spectrum across bands, lead-
ing to a spectrum summary, showing the global repartition of rhythmic periodicities:
mirsum(f)
miraudio mirframe mirspectrum mirspectrum mirfluctuation mirsum

‘Frame’, ‘Power’, ‘ longBands’
A
‘Terhardt’ ‘Max’, m, ‘Window’, 0
mirsegment ‘Bark’ / ‘Mel’ ‘Resonance’, ‘Fluctuation’
‘Mask’ ‘MinRes’, .mr
‘dB’ ‘NormalLength’
mirfluctuation accepts as input data type either:
• mirspectrum frame-decomposed objects (i.e., spectrograms),
• miraudio objects, where the audio waveform can be segmented (using mirsegment). The
audio waveform is decomposed into frames if it was not decomposed yet.
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword: same behavior than for miraudio objects.

FRAME DECOMPOSITION
• mirfluctuation(..., ‘InnerFrame’, l, r) specifies the spectrogram frame length l (in second), and,
optionally, the frame rate r (in Hertz), with by default a frame length of 23 ms and a frame
rate of 80 Hz.
• mirfluctuation(..., ‘Frame’, l, r) computes fluctuation using a window moving along the spectro-
gram, whose length l (in second) and frame rate r (in Hertz) can be specified as well, with by
default a frame length of 1 s and a frame rate of 10 Hz. 

mirbeatspectrum
B E AT SPECTRUM
The beat spectrum has been proposed as a measure of acoustic self-similarity as a function of
time lag, and is computed from the similarity matrix (cf. mirsimatrix) (Foote, Cooper and Nam,
2002).
mirsum
mirautocor
mirfilterbank
mircepstrum
mirau- mirframe mirmfcc

mirspectrum mirsimatrix mirbeatspectrum
mirsegment ‘Similarity’
mirtonalcentroid
One parameter related to mirsimatrix is accessible in mirbeatspectrum:
• ‘Distance’.
mirbeatspectrum accepts either:
• mirsimatrix objects,
• mirspectrum frame-decomposed objects,
• miraudio objects: in this case, the similarity matrix will be based on the mfcc (mirmfcc),
computed from ranks 8 to 33. The audio waveform is decomposed into frames if it was not
decomposed yet
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword: same behavior as for miraudio objects,
• other frame-decomposed analysis.
mirbeatspectrum can return several outputs:
1. the beat spectrum curve itself, and
2. the similarity matrix (mirsimatrix).

FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirbeatspectrum(..., ‘Frame’, ...) specifies the frame configuration, with by default a frame length
of 25 ms and a hop factor of 10 ms. For the specification of other frame configuration using ad-
ditional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section. 

mirevents (previously mironsets)
TEMPORAL L O C AT I O N O F E V E N T S
Another way of determining the tempo is based on first the computation of a detection curve,
showing the successive bursts of energy corresponding to the successive pulses. A peak picking
is automatically performed on the detection curve, in order to show the estimated positions of
the events, such as notes, chords, etc.
Onset curve (Envelope)

0.25
0.2
0.15
amplitude
0.1
0.05
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
mirevents(‘ragtime.wav’)
mirenvelope mirframe
miraudio mirevents
mirframe mirflux
mirsegment mirpeaks
mirsimatrix mirnovelty
The detection curve can be computed in various ways:
• mirevents(..., ‘Envelope’) computes an amplitude envelope, using mirenvelope (default

choice). The envelope extraction can be specified, as in mirenvelope:
• either the ‘Spectro’ option (default):
• mirevents(...,‘SpectroFrame’, fl, fh) species the frame length fl (in s.) and the hop factor
fh (as a value between 0 and 1). Default values: fl = .1 s., fh = .1
• the frequency reassigment method can be specified: ‘Freq’ (default), ‘Mel’, ‘Bark’ or
‘Cents’ (cf. mirspectrum).

• mirevents(..., ‘PowerSpectrum’, 0) turns off the computation of the power of the spec-
trum.
• mirevents(..., ‘Terhardt’) toggles on the ‘Terhardt’ operation (cf. mirspectrum).
• mirevents(..., ‘PreSilence’) adds further frames at the beginning of the audio sequence
by adding silence before the actual start of the sequence.
• mirevents(..., ‘PostSilence’) adds further frames at the end of the audio sequence by
adding silence after the actual end of the sequence.
• or the ‘Filter’ option: Related options in mirenvelope can be specified: ‘FilterType’, ‘Tau’,
‘CutOff’, ’PreDecim’, ‘Hilbert’ with same default value than for mirenvelope.
• mirevents(...,‘Filterbank’, N) specifies the number of channels for the filterbank de-

composition (mirfilterbank): the default value being N = 40. N = 0 toggles off the
filterbank decomposition.
• mirevents(...,‘FilterbankType’, t) specifies the type of filterbank decomposition (cf.

mirfilterbank).
• mirevents(..., ‘PreSilence’) adds further silence at the beginning of the audio sequence.
• mirevents(..., ‘PostSilence’) adds further silence at the end of the audio sequence.
• mirevents(..., ‘Sum’, ‘off ’) toggles off the channel summation (mirsum) that is performed by
default.
• Other available options, related to mirenvelope: ‘HalfwaveCenter’, ‘Log’, ‘MinLog’, ‘Mu’,

‘Power’, ‘Diff’, ‘HalfwaveDiff’, ‘Lambda’, ‘Center’, ‘Smooth’, ‘PostDecim’, ‘Sam-
pling’, ‘UpSample’, all with same default as in mirenvelope. In addition, mirenvelope’s
‘Normal’ option can be controlled as well, with a default set to 1.
• mirevents(..., ‘SpectralFlux’) computes a spectral flux. Options related to mirflux can be

passed here as well:
• ‘Inc’ (toggled on by default here),
• ‘Halfwave’ (toggled on by default here),
• ‘Complex’ (toggled off by default as usual),
• ‘Median’ (toggled on by default here, with same default parameters than in mirflux).
• mirevents(..., ‘Emerge’) is an improved version of the ‘SpectralFlux’ method that is able to de-
tect more notes and in the same time ignore the spectral variation produced by vibrato.

When the ‘Emerge’ method is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
Lartillot, O., Cereghetti, D., Eliard, K., Trost, W. J., Rappaz, M.-A., Grandjean, D., "Estimating
tempo and metrical features by tracking the whole metrical hierarchy", 3rd International Confer-
ence on Music & Emotion, Jyväskylä, 2013.
• mirevents(..., ‘Pitch’) computes a frame-decomposed autocorrelation function (mirautocor),

of same default characteristics than those returned by mirpitch – with however a range of
frequencies set by the following options:
• ‘Min’ (set by default to 30 Hz),
• ‘Max’ (set by default to 1000 Hz),
and subsequently computes the novelty curve of the resulting similarity matrix. Option related
to mirnovelty can be passed here as well:
• ‘KernelSize’ (set to 32 samples by default).
• mirevents(..., ‘Novelty’) computes a power-spectrogram (mirspectrum) in dB with maximum

frequency 1000 Hz, minimal frequency resolution 3 Hz and 50 ms frame with 10 ms hop fac-
tor, and subsequently computes the novelty curve of the resulting similarity matrix, using
‘Euclidean’ distance and the ‘oneminus’ similarity measure. Option related to mirnovelty can
be passed here as well:
• ‘KernelSize’ (set to 64 samples by default).
Besides, the ‘Diff’ option can also be used when using the ‘Novelty’ method.
Whatever the chosen method, the detection curve is finally converted into an envelope (using
mirenvelope), and further operations are performed in this order:
• ‘Center’ (performed if ‘Center’ was specified while calling mirevents).
• ‘Normal’ (always performed by default).
mirevents accepts as input data type either:
• envelope curves (resulting from mirenvelope),

• any scalar object, in particular:
• fluxes (resulting from mirflux)
• novelty curves (resulting from mirnovelty)
• similatrix matrices (resulting from mirsimatrix): its novelty is automatically computed,

with a ‘KernelSize’ of 32 samples.
• miraudio objects, where the audio waveform can be:
• segmented (using mirsegment),
• decomposed into channels (using mirfilterbank),
• decomposed into frames or not (using mirframe):
• if the audio waveform is decomposed into frames, the detection curve will be based
on the spectral flux;
• if the audio waveform is not decomposed into frames, the default detection curve will
be based on the envelope;
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword: same behavior than for miraudio objects,
• any other object: it is decomposed into frames (if not already decomposed) using the parame-
ters specified by the ‘Frame’ option; the flux will be automatically computed by default, or the
novelty (if the ‘Pitch’ option has been chosen).
EVENT DETECTION
• mirevents(..., 'Detect’, d) specifies options related to the peak picking from the detection
curve:
• d = ‘Peaks’ (default choice): local maxima are chosen as event positions;
• d = ‘Valleys’: local minima are chosen as event positions;
• d = 0, or ‘no’, or ‘off’: no peak picking is performed.
Options associated to the mirpeaks function can be specified as well. In particular:
• mirevents(..., ‘Contrast’, c) with default value here c = .01,
• mirevents(..., ‘Threshold’, t) with default value here t = 0.
• mirevents(..., ‘Single’) selects only the highest peak.

AT TACK A N D D E C AY
The ‘Attack’ and ‘Decay’ options estimate the beginning and end of the attack and decay phases
of each event.
• mirevents(..., ‘Attack’, meth) (or ‘Attacks’, meth) detects attack phases using the method meth,
which can be either ‘Derivate’ (default) or ‘Effort’.

1
0.8
amplitude
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8

time (s)
mirevents(‘pianoA4.wav’, ‘Attacks’)
The ‘Derivate’ method works as follows:
• A slow detection curve is computed in order to find the events, defined here as the local
maxima in the curve. More precisely, for each event we only consider the local minimum
preceding the local maximum: it gives a rough estimation of the onset time of the note.
This curve is computed using the method chosen by the user (‘Spectro’ (default), ‘Filter’,
etc.) and with other options set by default (for instance fl = .1 s., fh = .1 for the ‘Spectro’
method) but with ‘PreSilence’ and ‘PostSilence’ options set as specified by the user.
• A fast detection curve is computed in order to find the first local maximum of each note,
and to estimate precisely the attack phase. This is this curve that can be controlled by the
options when calling mirevents, with some changes in the default parameters:
• If the method ‘Spectro’ (default) is chosen, the default frame sizes are this time fl = .03
s. and fh = .02 (Nymoen et al. 2017).
• If the chosen method is ‘Filter’ instead, the default ‘FilterType’ is set to ‘Butter’, the ‘Fil-
terBank’ option is turned off and the ‘Hilbert’ transform is turned on.
• The attack phase is searched for in the temporal region between the onset time (given by
the slow curve) and the first local maximum (given by the fast curve). More precisely, in
order to reject any low-amplitude peak preceding the attack phase, the search for the at-
tack phase starts at the temporal position where the amplitude of the curve is at 20% of
the amplitude of the local maximum.

• The onset time, where the attack phase begins, is set at the instant where the rate of the
curve (i.e., the value of the first derivate of the curve) is 10% the maximal rate of the
curve in the attack phase.
• The attack time, where the attach phase ends, is set at the instant where the rate of the
curve is 25% the maximal rate of the curve in the attack phase.
The ‘Effort’ method comes from Timbre Toolbox (Peeters et al., 2011). The parameter ‘Alpha’, by
option set to 3.75, controls the multiplicative effort ratio. To get the same results as in Timbre
Toolbox3 , use the following options:
mirevents(…, ‘Attack’, ‘Effort’, ‘Filter’, ‘CutOff ’, 5, ‘Down’, 0, ‘Alpha’, 3)
• mirevents(..., ‘Decay’, r) (or ‘Decays’, ‘Release’, ‘Releases’) detects decay phases.

1
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amplitude
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0.4
0.2
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8

time (s)
mirevents(‘pianoA4.wav’, ‘Decays’)
S E G M E N TAT I O N
The temporal localization of events can be used for segmentation of the initial waveform:
Audio waveform
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
amplitude
−0.02
−0.04
−0.06
−0.08
−0.1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
o = mirevents(‘ragtime.wav’); mirsegment(‘ragtime.wav’, o)
3One remaining difference is that the Timbre Toolbox always normalizes the initial audio files
from 0 to 1.

Alternatively, the beginning of the attack phases can be used for the segmentation:
Audio waveform
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
amplitude
−0.02
−0.04
−0.06
−0.08
−0.1
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
time (s)
o = mirevents(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘Attacks’); mirsegment(‘ragtime.wav’, o)
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
The detection curve can be further decomposed into frames if the ‘Frame’ option has been spe-
cified, with default frame length 3 seconds and hop factor of 10% (0.3 second).
PRESELECTED MODEL
Complete (or nearly complete) models are available:
• mirevents(..., ‘Scheirer’) follows the model proposed in (Scheirer, 1998). Il corresponds to
mirevents(..., ‘FilterbankType’, ‘Scheirer’, ‘FilterType’, ‘HalfHann’, ‘Sampling’, 200, ‘Half-

waveDiff ’, ‘Sum’, 0, ‘Detect’, 0)
• mirenvelope(..., ‘Klapuri99) follows the model proposed in (Klapuri., 1999). Il corresponds to
o = mirevents(..., ‘FilterbankType’, ‘Klapuri’, ‘FilterType’, ‘HalfHann’, ‘PreDecim’, 180,

‘Sum’, 0, ‘PostDecim’, 0);
o2= mirenvelope(o, ‘HalfwaveDiff'); % absolute distance function D
o= mirenvelope(o, ‘Mu’, ‘HalfwaveDiff'); % relative distance function W
p = mirpeaks(o, ‘Contrast’, .2, ‘Chrono’);
p2 = mirpeaks(o2, ‘ScanForward’, p, ‘Chrono’);

o = combinepeaks(p, p2, .05);
where combinepeaks is a dedicated function that creates a curve made of burst at position of
peaks p and with amplitude related to peaks p2.
o = mirsum(o, ‘Weights’, fB);
The intensity is multiplied by the band center frequency fB.
o = mirenvelope(o, ‘Smooth’, 12);
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘OnsetPos’: the abscissae position of the starting attack phases, in sample index,
• ‘OnsetPosUnit’: the abscissae position of the starting attack phases, in the default abscissae
representation,
• ‘AttackPos’: the abscissae position of the ending attack phases, in sample index,
• ‘AttackPosUnit’: the abscissae position of the ending attack phases, in the default abscissae
representation,
• ‘DecayPos’: the abscissae position of the starting decay phases, in sample index,
• ‘DecayPosUnit’: the abscissae position of the starting decay phases, in the default abscissae
representation,
• ‘OffsetPos’: the abscissae position of the ending decay phases, in sample index,
• ‘OffsetPosUnit’: the abscissae position of the ending decay phases, in the default abscissae
representation. 

mireventdensity
DESCRIPTION
Estimates the average frequency of events, i.e., the number of events detected per second.
mirfilterbank mirframe
miraudio mirevents mireventdensity
mirsegment
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mireventdensity(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 10 s and no overlapping. For the specification of other frame configuration using ad-
ditional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section. 

mirtempo
DESCRIPTION
Estimates the tempo by detecting periodicities from the event detection curve.
1. C L A S S I C A L V E R S I O N
The classical paradigm for tempo estimation is based on detecting periodicities in a range of
BPMs, and choosing the maximum periodicity score for each frame separately.
mirfilterbank mirsum mirframe mirsum
mirenvelope mirautocor
miraudio mirevents * mirpeaks mirtempo
mirframe mirflux mirspectrum
mirsegment
Tempo estimation is carried out in several steps:
• The event detection curve computed in mirevents can be controlled using the following op-
tions:
• ‘Envelope’ (default) and ‘DiffEnvelope’:
• with the ‘Method’ set by default to ‘Filter’:
• with ‘FilterType’ option with same default,
• with ‘Filterbank’ option set to 10 by default,
• with ‘FilterbankType’ option with same default,
• ‘Method’ can be set to ‘Spectro’ as well, and the 'Freq','Mel','Bark','Cents' selection

can be specified, with same default.
• Besides ‘Method’: ‘HalfwaveCenter’, ‘HalfwaveDiff’, ‘Lambda’, ‘Center’, ‘Smooth’,

‘Sampling’, ‘Log’ and ‘Mu’, all with same default and ‘Diff’ set to ‘On’ by default.
• ‘SpectralFlux’: with ‘Complex’, ‘Inc’, ‘Median’ and ‘Halfwave’ with same default.
• ‘Pitch’ and ‘Novelty’.
Other options related to mirevents can be specified:
• ‘Filterbank’, with same default value than for mirevents,
• mirevents(..., 'Sum’, w) specifies when to sum the channels. Possible values:
• w = 'Before’: sum before the autocorrelation or spectrum computation.

• w = 'After’: autocorrelation or spectrum computed for each band, and summed into a
"summary".
• w = 0: tempo estimated for each band separately, with no channel recombination.
• mirtempo(..., ‘Frame’, ...) optionally performs a frame decomposition of the detection curve,
with by default a frame length of 3 s and a hop factor of 10% (0.3 s). For the specification of
other frame configuration using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’
section.
• Periodicities are detected on the detection curve based on several possible strategies:
• mirtempo(..., ‘Autocor’) computes an autocorrelation function of the detection curve, us-

ing mirautocor (default choice). Options related to mirautocor can be specified:
• 'Enhanced’ (toggled on by default4 here),
• 'Resonance’ (set by default to ‘ToiviainenSnyder’),
• ‘NormalWindow’ (same default value).
• mirtempo(..., ‘Spectrum’) computes a spectral decomposition of the detection curve, using

mirspectrum. Options related to mirspectrum can be passed here as well:
• 'ZeroPad’ (set by default here to 10 000 samples),
• 'Prod’ (same default, when toggled on, as for mirspectrum),
• 'Resonance’ either ‘ToiviainenSnyder’ (default value) or 0, ‘off’, or ‘no’.
• mirtempo(..., ‘Autocor’, ‘Spectrum’) combines both strategies: the autocorrelation function

is translated into the frequency domain in order to be compared to the spectrum curve,
and the two curves are subsequently multiplied.
• A peak picking is applied to the autocorrelation function or to the spectrum representation.

The parameters of the peak picking can be tuned:
• mirtempo(..., ‘Total’, m) selects not only the best tempo, but the m best tempos.
• mirtempo(..., ‘Min’, mi) indicates the lowest tempo taken into consideration, expressed in
bpm. Default value: 40 bpm.
• mirtempo(..., ‘Max’, ma) indicates the highest tempo taken into consideration, expressed in
bpm. Default value: 200 bpm.
4 except when ‘Track’ option is used, as explained.

• mirtempo(..., ‘Track’, t) tracks peaks along time, in order to obtain a stabilized tempo curve
and to limit therefore switches between alternative pulsations. Default value when option
toggled on: t = 0.1 s. When ‘Track’ is toggled on, ‘Enhanced’ is forced to off.
When ‘Track’ is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
Olivier Lartillot, “mirtempo: Tempo estimation through advanced frame-by-frame peaks track-
ing”, Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX 2010).
• mirtempo(..., ‘Contrast’, c) specifies the contrast factor for the peak picking. Default value:
c = 0.1
• mirtempo(..., ‘Nearest’, n) chooses the peak closest to n (in s.). Default value when option
toggled on: n = 0.5 s.
mirtempo accepts as input data type either:
• mirautocor objects,
• event detection curve (resulting from mirevents), frame-decomposed or not, channel-decom-

posed or not,
• and all the input data accepted by mirevents.
mirtempo can return several outputs:
1. the tempo itself (or set of tempi) and
2. the mirspectrum or mirautocor data, where is highlighted the (set of) peak(s) corre-
sponding to the estimated tempo (or set of tempi).
The tempo estimation related to the ragtime.wav example
[t ac] = mirtempo(‘ragtime.wav’)
leads to a tempo t = 129.1832 bpm and to the following autocorrelation curve ac:
The frame-decomposed tempo estimation related to the czardas example

Envelope autocorrelation
0.8
0.6
coefficients
0.4
0.2
0
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6
lag (s)
[t ac] = mirtempo(‘czardas’, ‘Frame’)
leads to the following tempo curve t:

Tempo
200
coefficient value (in bpm)
150
100
50
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Temporal location of events (in s.)
and the following autocorrelation frame decomposition ac:
Below are the results of the analysis of a more challenging example: the first seconds of the
first movement of a performance of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg concert No.2 in F Major, BWV 1047:
The classical method generates a tempo curve with a lot of shifts from one metrical level to
another.
2. METRE-BASED VERSION
mirtempo(..., ‘Metre’) tracks tempo by building a hierarchical metrical structure (using mirmetre).
This enables to find coherent metrical levels leading to a continuous tempo curve.

When the ‘Metre’ option is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
mirtempo(..., ‘Metre’) accepts as input data type either:

posed or not,
mirtempo(..., ‘Metre’) can return several outputs:
1. the tempo itself and
2. the mirmetre representation.
Below are the results of the analysis of the same excerpt of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg concert No.2
in F Major, BWV 1047, this time using the ‘Metre’ option:

The metrical structure built using the ‘Metre’ strategy enables to find coherent metrical levels
leading to a continuous tempo curve.
TEMPO CHANGE
mirtempo(..., ‘Change’) computes the difference between successive values of the tempo curve.
Tempo change is expressed independently from the choice of a metrical level by computing
the ratio of tempo values between successive frames, and is expressed in logarithmic scale (base
2), so that no tempo change gives a value of 0, increase of tempo gives positive value, and de-
crease of tempo gives negative value. 

mirmetre
METRICAL A N A LY S I S
Provides a detailed description of the hierarchical metrical structure by detecting periodicities
from the event detection curve and tracking a broad set of metrical levels.
When mirmetre is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
miraudio mirframe mirflux mirevents mirframe mirautocor mirpeaks mirmetre
The metrical hierarchy is estimated through the following steps:
• An event detection curve is computed using mirevents with the ‘Emerge’ method and no
actual event detection (‘Detect’ set to 0).
• An autocorrelation function is computed, using mirautocor, on the successive frames of the

event detection curve. Default options are used apart from those specified below:
• mirmetre(..., ‘Frame’, ...) specifies the parameters of the frame decomposition, with by de-
fault a frame length of 5 s and a hop factor of 5% (0.25 s).
• mirmetre(..., ‘Min’, mi) indicates the lowest periodicity taken into consideration, expressed
in bpm. Default value: 24 bpm.
• mirmetre(..., ‘Max’, ma) specifies the highest periodicity taken into consideration, ex-
pressed in bpm. Default value: Inf, meaning that no limit is set a priori on the highest pe-
riodicity.
• A peak picking is applied to the autocorrelation function, taking all peaks satisfying the con-
straints specified by the options below:
• mirmetre(..., ‘Contrast’, c) specifies the contrast factor for the peak picking. Default value:
c = 0.05.
• mirmetre(..., ‘Threshold’, c) specifies the contrast factor for the peak picking. Default val-
ue: c = 0.

mirmetre accepts as input data type either:
• mirmetre objects,

posed or not,
EXAMPLE
The figure below shows the output of the metrical analysis of the first five seconds of a per-
formance of the Finale (Allegro energico) of M. Bruch’s Violin Concerto No.1 in G minor, op.26. On
top of the autocorrelogram (corresponding to a standard output of the frame-decomposed mi-
rautocor computation), the metrical structure as tracked by the algorithm is annotated.
Metrical levels are indicated with lines of crosses that are linked together between successive
frames with dotted lines. The level index is indicated on the left of each line. The dominant
metrical level, indicated as level 1, is drawn in black, while other levels are shown in light
brown. The cross size indicates the related pulse strength, corresponding to the autocorrela-
tion score for that periodicity. If the actual periodicity is deviated from the theoretical harmo-
nic series of periodicities expected from a metrical structure, a vertical line is drawn between
the actual and the theoretical periods.
In this example, level 1 is subdivided into six sub-beats, with its elementary level 1/6, as well as
its half slower level 2/6 corresponding to a ternary division of level 1, and finally its three times
slower level 3/6 corresponding to a binary division of level 1.

ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Autocor’: the autocorrelogram,
• ‘Globpm’: the series of BPM values for each successive frame, related to level 1 of each me-
trical structure. 

mirmetroid
METRICAL CENTROID AND STRENGTH

Provides two description derived from the metrical analysis carried out using mirmetre, with a
further selection of primary metrical levels.
1. Dynamic metrical centroid: an assessment of metrical activity that is based on the computa-
tion of the centroid of the selected metrical levels. The resulting metrical centroid curve
indicates the temporal evolution of the metrical activity expressed in BPM, so that the val-
ues can be compared with the tempo values also in BPM. High BPM values for the metrical
centroid indicate that more elementary metrical levels (i.e., very fast levels corresponding
to very fast rhythmical values) predominate. Low BPM values indicate on the contrary that
higher metrical levels (i.e., slow pulsations corresponding to whole notes, bars, etc.) pre-
dominate. If one particular level is particularly dominant, the value of the metrical centroid
naturally approaches the corresponding tempo value on that particular level.
2. Dynamic metrical strength: indicates whether there is a clear and strong pulsation, or even a
strong metrical hierarchy, or whether on in the other hand the pulsation is somewhat hid-
den, unclear, or there is a complex mixture of pulsations. Instead of simply identifying beat
strength with the autocorrelation score of that main metrical level, we sum the autocorrela-
tion scores of the selected metrical levels. The metrical strength is increased by any in-
crease of autocorrelation score at any dominant level, or if new dominant levels are added
to the selection. Whereas the autocorrelation score is a value lower than 1, the metrical
strength can exceed 1.
When mirmetroid is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
mirmetroid accepts as input data type either:
• mirmetre objects,

posed or not,

OPTIONS
For each frame, the dominant metrical levels are selected and the centroid of their periodicity
(in seconds) is computed, using as weights the amount of autocorrelation score at that specific
level that exceeds the autocorrelation score of the underlying metrical sub-levels. In this way,
any sudden change in the number of selected metrical levels from one time frame to the suc-
cessive one does not lead to abrupt changes in the metrical centroid curve.
• mirmetroid(..., ‘Gate’) uses a simpler method, where the weights are simply identified to the
corresponding autocorrelation scores, leading to possible abrupt changes in the metrical cen-
troid curve.
If several metrical hierarchies are detected in parallel, separate metrical centroid and strength
curves for each individual metrical hierarchy. The multiple metrical centroid and strength
curves are then combined into one metrical centroid curve and one metrical strength curve.
The combined metrical centroid curve is the weighted average of the metrical centroid curves
of the separate metrical hierarchies, using the metrical strengths as weights. The combined
metrical strength is the summation of the metrical strength curves of the separate metrical hi-
erarchies.
• mirmetroid(..., ‘Combine’, 0) does not perform the combination of the metrical centroid and
strength curves, displaying therefore as many curves as metrical hierarchies detected. 

mirpulseclarity
When mirpulseclarity is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
Olivier Lartillot, Tuomas Eerola, Petri Toiviainen, Jose Fornari, "Multi-feature modeling of
pulse clarity: Design, validation, and optimization", International Conference on Music Information
Retrieval, Philadelphia, 2008.
DESCRIPTION
Estimates the rhythmic clarity, indicating the strength of the beats estimated by the mirtempo
function.
rms ART
frame autocor novelty reson enhan

bands autocor sum
+ after
spectrum log hwr sum bef MAX ENTR2
audio MIN HARM2
diff KURT
filterbank: LPF: ATT2 TEMP
sum adj
Gammatone IIR ENTR1
Scheirer halfHanning sum peaks ATT1 HARM1
Klapuri VAR
The pulse clarity can be estimated in various ways:
• mirpulseclarity(..., s) selects a particular heuristic for pulse clarity estimation. Most heuristics
are based on the autocorrelation curve computed for tempo estimation (i.e., the second out-
put of mirtempo) (Lartillot, Eerola, Toiviainen, and Fornari, 2008):
• s = ‘MaxAutocor’ selects the maximum correlation value in the autocorrelation curve

(default heuristic).
• s = ‘MinAutocor’ selects the minimum correlation value in the autocorrelation curve.
• s = ‘MeanPeaksAutocor’ averages the local maxima in the autocorrelation curve.
• s = ‘KurtosisAutocor’ computes the kurtosis of the autocorrelation curve.
• s = ‘EntropyAutocor’ computes the entropy of the autocorrelation curve.
• s = ‘InterfAutocor’ computes the harmonic relations between pulsations.
• s = ‘TempoAutocor’ selects the tempo related to the highest autocorrelation.
Others heuristics are based more simply on the detection curve itself:

• s = ‘Articulation’ estimates the average silence ratio of the detection curve (option ‘ASR’
in mirlowenergy.
• s = ‘Attack’ averages the attack slopes of all events (the ‘Diff’, ‘Gauss’ can be specified,
with same default).
• s = ‘ExtremEnvelope’ estimates the total amplitude variability of the detection curve.
mirpulseclarity(..., ‘Model’, m) selects one out of two possible models that have been found as
optimal in our experiments (Lartillot, Eerola, Toiviainen, and Fornari, 2008):
• m = 1 selects the default model with its associated weight.
• m = 2 selects the following model: ‘Gammatone’, no log, no ‘Resonance’, ‘Lambda’ set to .8,
and ‘Sum’ set to ‘After’, with its associated weight.
• m = [1 2] sums the two models altogether.
The event detection curve computed in mirevents can be controlled using the following op-
tions:
• ‘Envelope’ (default) and ‘DiffEnvelope’:
• with the ‘Method’ set by default to ‘Spectro’, and the 'Freq','Mel','Bark','Cents' selec-
tion can be specified, with same default.
• ‘Method’ can be set to ‘Filter’ as well:
• with ‘FilterType’ option with same default,
• with ‘Filterbank’ option set to 20 by default,
• with ‘FilterbankType’ option set to ‘Scheirer’ by default,
• Besides ‘Method’: ‘HalfwaveDiff’, ‘Lambda’, ‘Smooth’, ‘Log’ with same default, and
‘Mu’, set by default here to 100.
• ‘SpectralFlux’: with ‘Inc’ with same default, and ‘Median’ and ‘Halfwave’ toggled off by
default.
• and ‘Pitch’.
The autocorrelation function performed in mirautocor can be controlled using the following
options:
• ‘Enhanced’ (toggled off by default; forced to ‘Off’ in ‘MinAutocor’),
• ‘Resonance’, ‘Min’, ‘Max’ (with same default as in mirautocor).

Some further options operates as in mirtempo:
• ‘Sum’,
• ‘Total’ (ignored in ‘MaxAutocor’, ‘MinAutocor‘ and ‘EntropyAutocor’ methods),
• ‘Contrast’: with a default value set to .01,
mirpulseclarity accepts as input data type either:

posed or not,
mirpulseclarity can return several outputs:
1. the pulse clarity value and
2. the mirautocor data that was used for the estimation of pulse clarity.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirpulseclarity(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 5 s and a hop factor of 10% (0.5 s). For the specification of other frame configuration
using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section. 

3.3. Timbre
mirattacktime
DESCRIPTION
The attack phase detected using the ‘Attacks’ option in mirevents can offer some timbral charac-
terizations. One simple way of describing the attack phase, proposed in mirattacktime, consists
in estimating its temporal duration.
Envelope (centered)
2.5
1.5
amplitude
0.5
!0.5
4 5 6 7 8 9
time (s)
mirenvelope
miraudio mirpeaks mirevents mirattacktime
mirframe mirflux ‘Filter’

mirsegment
‘Attack’
‘Normal’, ‘AcrossSegments’
mirattacktime accepts as input data type either:
• event detection curves (resulting from mirevents), already including peaks or not,
mirevents is normalized using the ‘Normal’ option set to ‘AcrossSegments’.
Some options in mirevents can be controlled:
• mirattacktime(..., ‘Filter’) uses the ‘Filter’ method instead of the default ‘Spectro’.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘Down’, r) controls the ‘Down’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘CutOff’, f) controls the ‘CutOff ’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.

• mirattacktime(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘Contrast’, c) controls the ‘Contrast’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattacktime(..., ‘Attacks’, meth) controls the ‘Attacks’ option in mirevents.
mirattacktime can return several outputs:
1. the attack time itself and
2. the event detection curve returned by mirevents, including the detected events and the
attack phases.
OPTIONS
• mirattacktime(..., scale) specifies the output scale, linear or logarithmic. Possible values for scale
are:
• scale = ‘Lin’ returns the duration in a linear scale (in seconds). (Default choice)
• scale = ‘Log’ returns the duration in a log scale (Krimphoff et al., 1994).
The log attack time given by the Timbre Toolbox (Peeters et al., 2011) can be obtained by using
the following set of options:
mirattacktime(…, ‘Filter’, ‘Attack’, ‘Effort’, ‘Log’, ‘Down’, 0, ‘CutOff ’,5) 

mirattackslope
DESCRIPTION
Another description of the attack phase is related to its average slope. Values are expressed in
the same scale than the original signal, but normalized in time (expressed in seconds).
mirenvelope
miraudio mirpeaks mirevents mirattackslope

mirsegment
‘Attack’
mirattackslope accepts as input data type either:
• event detection curves (resulting from mirevents),
• mirattackslope(..., ‘Filter’) uses the ‘Filter’ method instead of the default ‘Spectro’.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘Down’, r) controls the ‘Down’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘Normal’, n) controls the ‘Normal’ option in mirevents (by default set to
‘AcrossSegments’).
• mirattackslope(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackslope(..., ‘Attacks’, meth) controls the ‘Attacks’ option in mirevents.
The peak picking from the event detection is performed in any case. Its ‘Contrast’ parameter
can be specified. Its default value is the same as in mirevents.
mirattackslope can return several outputs:

1. the attack slope itself and
attack phases.
OPTIONS
• mirattackslope(x, meth) specifies the method for slope estimation. Possible values for meth are:
• meth = ‘Diff’ computes the slope as a ratio between the magnitude difference at the be-
ginning and the ending of the attack period, and the corresponding time difference. (De-
fault choice)
Envelope (centered)
2.5
1.5
amplitude
0.5
!0.5
4 5 6 7 8 9
time (s)
• meth = ‘Gauss’ computes the average of the slope, weighted by a gaussian curve that em-
phasizes values at the middle of the attack period (similar to Peeters, 2004). 

mirattackleap
DESCRIPTION
Another simple way of describing the attack phase, proposed in mirattackleap, consists in esti-
mating the amplitude difference between the beginning and the end of the attack phase. Values
are expressed in the same scale than the original signal.
Envelope (centered)
2.5
1.5
amplitude
0.5
!0.5
4 5 6 7 8 9
time (s)
mirenvelope
miraudio mirpeaks mirevents mirattacktime

mirsegment
‘Attack’
mirattackleap accepts as input data type either:
• mirattackleap(..., ‘Filter’) uses the ‘Filter’ method instead of the default ‘Spectro’.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘Down’, r) controls the ‘Down’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘Normal’, n) controls the ‘Normal’ option in mirevents (by default set to
‘AcrossSegments’).

• mirattackleap(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirattackleap(..., ‘Attacks’, meth) controls the ‘Attacks’ option in mirevents.
mirattackleap can return several outputs:
1. the attack leap itself and
attack phases.

mirdecaytime
DESCRIPTION
Description of the decay phase related to its temporal duration, similar to mirattacktime.
Envelope (centered)
2.5
1.5
amplitude
0.5
!0.5
4 5 6 7 8 9
time (s)
mirenvelope
miraudio mirpeaks mirevents mirdecaytime

mirsegment
‘Attack’
mirdecaytime accepts as input data type either:
• and all the input data accepted by mirevents. In this case mirevents is called with the ‘Spectro’
method.
• mirdecaytime(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecaytime(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecaytime(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecaytime(..., ‘Contrast’, c) controls the ‘Contrast’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecaytime(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecaytime(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents.

mirdecaytime can return several outputs:
1. the decay time itself and
decay phases.
OPTIONS
• mirdecaytime(..., scale) specifies the output scale, linear or logarithmic. Possible values for scale
are:
• scale = ‘Lin’ returns the duration in a linear scale (in seconds). (Default choice)
• scale = ‘Log’ returns the duration in a log scale.

mirdecayleap
DESCRIPTION
Description of the decay phase related to its amplitude change, similar to mirattackleap. Values
are expressed in the same scale than the original signal.
Envelope (centered)
2.5
1.5
amplitude
0.5
!0.5
4 5 6 7 8 9
time (s)
mirenvelope
miraudio mirpeaks mirevents mirdecaytime

‘Decay’
mirsegment
mirdecayleap accepts as input data type either:
method.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘Normal’, n) controls the ‘Normal’ option in mirevents (by default set to ‘Across-
Segments’).
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents.

mirdecayleap can return several outputs:
1. the decay leap itself and
decay phases. 

mirdecayslope (previously mirdecreaseslope)
DESCRIPTION
Description of the decay phase related to its decay slope, similar to mirattackslope. Values are
expressed in the same scale than the original signal, but normalized in time (expressed in sec-
onds).
mirenvelope
miraudio mirpeaks mirevents mirdecayslope

‘Decay’
mirsegment
mirdecayslope accepts as input data type either:
method.
• mirdecayslope(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayslope(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayslope(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘Normal’, n) controls the ‘Normal’ option in mirevents (by default set to ‘Across-
Segments’).
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirdecayleap(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents
mirdecayslope can return several outputs:
1. the decay slope itself and

decay phases.
OPTIONS
• mirdecayslope(x, meth) specifies the method for slope estimation. Possible values for meth are:
• meth = ‘Diff’ computes the slope as a ratio between the magnitude difference at the be-
ginning and the ending of the decay period, and the corresponding time difference. (De-
fault choice)
• meth = ‘Gauss’ computes the average of the slope, weighted by a gaussian curve that em-
phasizes values at the middle of the decay period (similar to Peeters, 2004). 

mirduration
DESCRIPTION
Duration (in s.) of each successive event. It is computed by detecting the attack and decay
phases of each event and by taking the portion of the curve between the onset and offset times
that is over 40% of the maximum of the amplitude between the attack and decay times
(Peeters, 2004).
mirduration accepts as input data type either:
• and all the input data accepted by mirevents. In this case mirevents is called with the ‘Filter’
method.
• mirduration(..., ‘Single’) toggles on the ‘Single’ option in mirevents.
• mirduration(..., ‘LogCurve’) toggles on the ‘Log’ option in mirevents.
• mirduration(..., ‘MinLog’, ml) controls the ‘MinLog’ option in mirevents.
• mirduration(..., ‘PreSilence’) toggles on the ‘PreSilence’ option in mirevents.
• mirduration(..., ‘PostSilence’) toggles on the ‘PostSilence’ option in mirevents
mirduration can return several outputs:
1. the duration itself and
attack and decay phases. 

mirzerocross
W AV E F O R M SIGN -CHANGE R AT E
A simple indicator of noisiness consists in counting the number of times the signal crosses the
X-axis (or, in other words, changes sign).
Audio waveform
0.0&
0.02
0.01
amplitude
!0.01
!0.02
!0.0&
1.701 1.702 1.70& 1.704 1.705 1.706 1.707 1.708 1.709
time (s)
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirzerocross
mirsegment mirframe
mirzerocross actually accepts any input data type (cf. section 4.2).
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirzerocross(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length
OPTIONS
• mirzerocross(..., ‘Per’, p) precises the temporal reference for the rate computation. Possible val-
ues:
• p = ‘Second’: number of sign-changes per second (Default).

• p = ‘Sample’: number of sign-changes divided by the total number of samples. The ‘Second’
option returns a result equal to the one returned by the ‘Sample’ option multiplied by the
sampling rate.
• mirzerocross(..., ‘Dir’, d) precises the definition of sign change. Possible values:
• d = ‘One’: number of sign-changes from negative to positive only (or, equivalently, from
positive to negative only). (Default)
• d = 'Both': number of sign-changes in both ways. The 'Both' option returns a result equal to
twice the one returned by the 'One’ option.

mirrolloff
HIGH-FREQUENCY ENERGY (I)

One way to estimate the amount of high frequency in the signal consists in finding the fre-
quency such that a certain fraction of the total energy is contained below that frequency. This
ratio is fixed by default to .85 (following Tzanetakis and Cook, 2002), other have proposed .95
(Pohle, Pampalk and Widmer, 2005).
Spectrum
3500
3000
2500
85% of the energy
magnitude
2000
1500
1000
500
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000
frequency (Hz)
5640.53 Hz
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirrolloff
mirsegment mirframe
mirrolloff accepts either:
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirrolloff(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of

OPTION
• mirrolloff(..., 'Threshold’, p) specifies the energy threshold, as a percentage. Default value: .85
• mirrolloff(..., ‘MinRMS’, m) specifies the threshold m, as a value from 0 to 1, for the detection
of quasi-silent frames, for which no value is given. For a given frame, if the RMS of the input
spectrogram is below m times the highest RMS value over the frames, NaN is returned. de-
fault value: m = .005 

mirbrightness
HIGH-FREQUENCY ENERGY (II)

A dual method consists in fixing this time the cut-off frequency, and measuring the amount of
energy above that frequency (Juslin, 2000). The result is expressed as a number between 0 and
1.
Spectrum
3500
3000
2500
53.96% of the energy
magnitude
2000
1500
1000
500
0
0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000
frequency (Hz)
1500 Hz
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirbrightness
mirsegment mirframe
mirbrightness accepts either:
• miraudio objects (same as for mirspectrum).
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirbrightness(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 50 ms and half overlapping. For the specification of other frame configuration using
additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.

OPTIONS
• mirbrightness(..., 'CutOff’, f) specifies the frequency cut-off, in Hz. Default value: 1500 Hz.
The value 1000 Hz has been proposed in (Laukka, Juslin and Bresin, 2005), and the value of
3000 Hz has been proposed in (Juslin, 2000).
• mirbrightness(..., ‘MinRMS’, m) specifies the threshold m, as a value from 0 to 1, for the detec-
tion of quasi-silent frames, for which no value is given. For a given frame, if the RMS of the
input spectrogram is below m times the highest RMS value over the frames, NaN is returned.
default value: m = .005 

mircentroid, mirspread, mirskewness, mirkurtosis, mirflat-
ness, mirentropy
S TAT I S T I C A L DESCRIPTION OF SPECTRAL DISTRIBU-

TION
The spectral distribution can be described by statistical moments: centroid, spread, skewness,
kurtosis, flatness as well as by entropy.
See the Statistics section (§4.2) for more details about each operator.
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mir...
mirsegment mirframe
All these operators accepts either:
• mirspectrum objects
• miraudio objects (same as for mirspectrum)
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
‘Frame’ performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of 50 ms and half
overlapping. For the specification of other frame configuration using additional parameters, cf.
the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
OPTIONS
See the Statistics section (§4.2) for more details about each operator. 

mirmfcc
MEL-FREQUENCY CEPSTRAL COEFFICIENTS

MFCC offers a description of the spectral shape of the sound. We recall that the computation
of the cepstrum followed the following scheme:
mirspectrum (“Inverse”)
audio (Fourier Abs Lo Fourier
transform) transform
The computation of mel-frequency cepstral coefficients is highly similar:
mirspectrum Discrete
(Fourier Abs Lo (‘Mel’) cosine
transform) transform
Here the frequency bands are positioned logarithmically (on the Mel scale) which approxi-
mates the human auditory system's response more closely than the linearly-spaced frequency
bands. And the Fourier Transform is replaced by a Discrete Cosine Transform. A discrete co-
sine transform (DCT) is a Fourier-related transform similar to the discrete Fourier transform
(DFT), but using only real numbers. It has a strong "energy compaction" property: most of the
signal information tends to be concentrated in a few low-frequency components of the DCT.
That is why by default only the first 13 components are returned.
By convention, the coefficient of rank zero simply indicates the average energy of the signal.
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirmfcc

‘Mel’
‘Log’
mirsegment mirframe

mirmfcc accepts either:
mirmfcc can return several outputs:
• the mfcc coefficients themselves and
• the spectral representation (output of mirspectrum), in mel-band and log-scale.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirmfcc(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
OPTIONS
• mirmfcc(..., 'Bands’, b) indicates the number of bands used in the mel-band spectrum decom-
position. By default, b = 40.
• mirmfcc(..., 'Rank’, N) computes the coefficients of rank(s) N. The default value is N = 1:13.
Beware that the coefficient related to the average energy is by convention here of rank 0.
This zero value can be included to the array N as well.
• If the output is frame-decomposed, showing the the temporal evolution of the MFCC along
the successive frames, the temporal differentiation can be computed:
• mirmfcc(..., 'Delta’, d) performs temporal differentiations of order d of the coefficients,

also called delta-MFCC (for d = 1) or delta-delta-MFCC (for d = 2). By default, d = 1.
• mirmfcc(..., 'Radius’, r) specifies, for each frame, the number of successive and previous
neighbouring frames taken into consideration for the least-square approximation used for
the derivation. For a given radius r, the Delta operation for each frame i is computed by
summing the MFCC coefficients at frame i+j (with j from -r to +r) , each coefficient being
multiplied by its weight j. Usually the radius is equal to 1 or 2. Default value: r = 2.
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Rank’: the series of rank(s) taken into consideration (same as ‘Pos’),

• ‘Delta’: the number of times the delta operation has been performed. 

mirroughness
S E N S O RY DISSONANCE
Plomp and Levelt (1965) have proposed an estimation of the sensory dissonance, or roughness,
related to the beating phenomenon whenever pair of sinusoids are closed in frequency. The au-
thors propose as a result an estimation of roughness depending on the frequency ratio of each
pair of sinusoids represented as follows:
An estimation of the total roughness is available in mirroughness by computing the peaks of the
spectrum, and taking the average of all the dissonance between all possible pairs of peaks
(Sethares, 1998).
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirframe mirspectrum mirpeaks mirroughness
mirsegment
The ‘Contrast’ parameter associated to mirpeaks can be specified, and is set by default to .01
mirroughness accepts either:
• mirspectrum objects, where peaks have already been picked or not,
• miraudio objects: same as for mirspectrum, except that a frame decomposition is auto-
matically performed. This forced frame decomposition is due to the fact that roughness can
only be associated to a spectral representation association to a short-term sound excerpt:
there is no sensory dissonance provoked by a pair of sinusoid significantly distant in time.
mirroughness can return several outputs:

1. the roughness value itself and
2. the spectral representation (output of mirspectrum) showing the picked peaks (returned
by mirpeaks).
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirroughness(..., ‘Frame’, ...) specifies the frame configuration, with by default a frame length of
50 ms and half overlapping. For the syntax, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
OPTIONS
• mirroughness(..., m) specifies the method used:
• m = ‘Sethares’ (default): based on the summation of roughness between all pairs of sines
(obtained through spectral peak-picking) (Sethares, 1998). For each pair of peaks, the cor-
responding elementary roughness is obtained by multiplying the two peak amplitudes al-
together, and by weighting the results with the corresponding factor given on the disso-
nance curve.
• mirroughness(..., ‘Min’): Variant of the Sethares model where the summation is weigh-
ted by the minimum amplitude of each pair of peak, instead of the product of their
amplitudes (Weisser and Lartillot, 2013).
• m = ‘Vassilakis’: variant of ‘Sethares’ model with a more complex weighting (Vassilakis,

2001, Eq. 6.23). 

mirregularity
SPECTRAL P E A K S VA R I A B I L I T Y
The irregularity of a spectrum is the degree of variation of the successive peaks of the spec-
trum.
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirpeaks mirregularity

‘Reso’, ‘SemiTone’
mirsegment mirframe
The ‘Contrast’ parameter associated to mirpeaks can be specified, and is set by default to .01
mirregularity accepts either:
• mirspectrum objects, where peaks have already been picked or not,
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirregularity(..., ‘Frame’,
Chapter ...) performs
7. Spectral firstModel
Envelope a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 50 ms and half overlapping. For the specification of other frame configuration using
although in the log10 domain. In this paper, an alternative calculation of the irregula
OPTION
used,
S where the irregularity is the sum of the square of the difference in amplitude b
• mirregularity(..., 'Jensen’) is based on (Jensen, 1999), where the irregularity is the sum of the
adjoining partials,
square of the difference in amplitude between adjoining partials.(Default approach)
N N
2 2
irregularity = ( " (ak ! ak +1 ) )/ "a k
(7.16
k =1 k =1
and the N+1 partial is supposed to be zero. The irregularity value calculated in this w
• mirregularity(..., 'Krimphoff’) is based on (Krimphoff et al., 1994), where the irregularity is
the sum ofmost
the amplitude minus the
often, although notmean of thebelow
always, preceding,
1. It same
is byand next amplitude.
definition always below 2.
Changing irregularity definitely changes the perceived timbre of the sound.
Irregularity changes the amplitude relations in the same tristimulus group. Since
tristimulus 2 value is large, this is where irregularity has the greatest influence.
The change of irregularity translates therefore principally into a change in the rat
between the second and the fourth partial amplitude. The third partial is fixed by the
Several studies have pointed at the importance of the irregularity of the spectrum
[Krimphoff et al. 1994]. Irregularity is defined in [Krimphoff et al. 1994] as the sum
amplitude minus the mean of the preceding, same and next amplitude,
N !1
ak !1 + ak + ak +1
irregularity = "a k !
3
(7.15)
k=2
 

3.4. Pitch
mirpitch
PITCH E S T I M AT I O N
Extract pitches, returned either as continuous pitch curves or as discretized note events.
miraudio mirautocor * mirpeaks mirpitch
The pitch content can be estimated in various ways:
• mirpitch(..., ‘Autocor’) computes an autocorrelation function of the audio waveform, using

mirautocor. This is the default strategy. Options related to mirautocor can be specified:
• 'Enhanced’, toggled on by default here,
• 'Compress’, set by default to .5,
• filterbank configuration can be specified: either ‘2Channels’ (default configuration),

‘Gammatone’ or ‘NoFilterbank’,
• if a filterbank is used, ‘Sum’ specifies whether the channels are recombined once the au-
tocorrelation function is computed (‘Sum’, 1, which is the default), or if on the contrary,
the channels are kept separate, and pitch content is extracted in each channel separately
(‘Sum’, 0).
• mirpitch(..., ‘Spectrum’) computes the FFT spectrum (mirspectrum). Options related to mir-
spectrum can be specified: ‘Res’ and ‘dB’.
• mirpitch(..., ‘AutocorSpectrum’) computes the autocorrelation (mirautocor) of the FFT

spectrum (mirspectrum).
• mirpitch(..., ‘Cepstrum’) computes the cepstrum (mircepstrum).
• These methods can be combined. In this case, the resulting representations (autocorrelation
function or cepstral representations) are all expressed in the frequency domain and multi-
plied altogether.

Then a peak picking is applied to the autocorrelation function or to the cepstral representa-
tion. The parameters of the peak picking can be tuned.
• mirpitch(..., 'Total’, m) selects only the m best pitches.
• mirpitch(..., 'Mono’) only select the best pitch, corresponding hence to mirpitch(..., 'Total’, 1).
• mirpitch(..., 'Min’, mi) indicates the lowest pitch taken into consideration, in Hz. Default val-
ue: 75 Hz, following a convention in the Praat software (Boersma & Weenink, 2005).
• mirpitch(..., 'Max’, ma) indicates the highest pitch taken into consideration, expressed in Hz.
Default value: 2400 Hz, because there seem to be some problems with higher frequency, due
probably to the absence of pre-whitening in our implementation of Tolonen and Karjalainen
autocorrelation approach (used by default).
• mirpitch(..., 'Threshold’, t) specifies the threshold factor for the peak picking. Default value: c
= 0.4.
• mirpitch(..., 'Contrast’, c) specifies the contrast factor for the peak picking. Default value: c =
0.1.
• mirpitch(..., 'Order’, o) specifies the ordering for the peak picking. Default value: o = ‘Ampli-
tude’.
mirpitch accepts as input data type either:
• mirpitch objects,
• output of mirpeaks computation,

• mircepstrum objects,
• miraudio objects, where the audio waveform can be:
• segmented (using mirsegment),
• when pitch is estimated by autocorrelating the audio waveform (‘Autocor’ strategy), the
audio waveform is be default first decomposed into channels (cf. the ‘Filterbank’ option
below),
• decomposed into frames or not (using mirframe);
• file name or the ‘Folder’ keyword: same behavior than for miraudio objects,
• mirmidi objects.
mirpitch can return several outputs:
1. the pitch frequencies themselves, and
2. the mirautocor or mircepstrum data, where is highlighted the (set of) peak(s) corre-
sponding to the estimated pitch (or set of pitches).
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirpitch(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
46.4 ms and a hop factor of 10 ms (Tolonen & Karjalainen, 2000). For the specification of oth-
er frame configuration using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
• mirpitch(..., 'Cent’) convert the pitch axis from Hz to cent scale. One octave corresponds to
1200 cents, so that 100 cents correspond to a semitone in equal temperament.
• mirpitch(..., 'Segment’) segments the obtained monodic5 pitch curve in cents as a succession
of notes with stable frequencies.
When ‘Segment’ is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
5This ‘Segment’ option requires a monodic pitch curve extraction using the ‘Mono’ option,
which is therefore toggled on, as well as the ‘Cent’ and ‘Frame’ options.

Olivier Lartillot, “Computational analysis of maqam music: From audio transcription to musi-
cological analysis, everything is tightly intertwined”, Acoustics 2012 Hong Kong Conference.
• mirpitch(..., ‘SegMinLength’, l) specifies the minimum length of segments, in number of

samples. Default length: l = 2 samples.
• mirpitch(..., ‘SegPitchGap’, g) specifies the maximum tolerated pitch gap within a seg-
ment, in cents. The pitch distance is computed between the current sample is more dis-
tant and the average pitch of the segment before that point. Default gap: g = 45 cents.
• mirpitch(..., ‘SegTimeGap’, g) specifies the maximum tolerated silence within a segment,

in number of samples. Default gap: g = 20 samples.
• Segments with too low pitch periodicity (of autocorrelation value lower than 5% of the
maximal value in that audio piece) are discarded.
• mirpitch(..., 'Median’, l) performs a median filtering of the pitch curve. The length of the me-
dian filter is given by l (in s.). Its default value is .1 s. The median filtering can only be applied
to mono-pitch curve. If several pitches were extracted in each frame, a mono-pitch curve is
first computed by selecting the best peak of each successive frame.
• mirpitch(..., 'Stable’, th, n) remove pitch values when the difference (or more precisely absolute
logarithmic quotient) with the n precedent frames exceeds the threshold th.
• if th is not specified, the default value .1 is used.
• if n is not specified, the default value 3 is used.
• mirpitch(..., 'Reso’, 'SemiTone’) removes peaks whose distance to one or several higher peaks
is lower than a given threshold 2^(1/12) (corresponding to a semitone).
PRESET MODEL
• mirpitch(..., 'Tolonen’) implements (part of) the model proposed in (Tolonen & Karjalainen,
2000). It is equivalent to
mirpitch(..., 'Enhanced', 2:10, 'Generalized', .67, '2Channels')
EXAMPLE
[p ac] = mirpitch(‘ragtime.wav', 'Frame')
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT

Pitch
1800
1600
1400
coefficient value (in Hz)
1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
• ‘Amplitude’: the amplitude associated with each pitch component.
I M P O RTAT I O N OF P I T C H D ATA
mirpitch(f, a, r) creates a mirpitch object based on the frequencies specified in f and the related
amplitudes specified in a, using a frame sampling rate of r Hz (set by default to 100 Hz).
Both f and a can be either:
• a matrix where each column represent one pitch track and lines corresponds to frames,
• an array of cells, where each cell, representing one individual frame, contains a vector. 

mirmidi
A U T O M AT E D T R A N S C R I P T I O N
Segments the audio into events, extracts pitches related to each event and attempts a conver-
sion of the result into a MIDI representation.
The audio segmentation is based on the event detection given by mirevents with the default pa-
rameter, but with the ‘Sum’ option toggled off in order to keep the channel decomposition of
the input audio data.
The MIDI output is represented using the MIDI Toolbox note matrix representation. The dis-
played output is the piano-roll representation of the MIDI data, which requires MIDI Toolbox.
Similarly, the result can be:
• sonified using mirplay, with the help of MIDI Toolbox;
• saved using mirsave:
• as a MIDI file (by default), with the help of MIDI Toolbox,
• as a LilyPond file (if the specified file has a ‘.ly’ extension).
miraudio mirsegment mirpitch mirmidi
mirevents
‘Sum’, 0
The ‘Contrast’ parameter associated to mirpitch can be specified, and is set by default to .3

mirinharmonicity
PARTIALS NON - M U LT I P L E OF FUNDAMENTALS

mirinharmonicity(x) estimates the inharmonicity, i.e., the amount of partials that are not mul-
tiples of the fundamental frequency, as a value between 0 and 1. More precisely, the inhar-
monicity considered here takes into account the amount of energy outside the ideal harmonic
series.
For that purpose, we use a simple function estimating the inharmonicity of each frequency giv-
en the fundamental frequency f0:
0 f
0 f0 2 f0 3 f0 4 f0
WARNING:
This simple model presupposes that there is only one fundamental frequency.
miraudio mirautocor mirpeaks mirpitch

f0
‘Mono’ mirinharmonicity
mirinharmonicity accepts as main input either:
mirinharmonicity can return several outputs:
1. the inharmonicity rate itself,
2. the mirspectrum data, and

3. the fundamental frequency ‘f0’.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirinharmonicity(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 10 ms and a hop factor of 12,5% (1.25 ms). For the specification of other frame config-
uration using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
OPTION
mirinharmonicity(..., 'f0’, f) bases the computation of the inharmonicity on the fundamental fre-
quency indicated by f. The frequency data can be either a number, or a mirscalar object (for ins-
tance, the output of a mirpitch computation).
By default, the fundamental frequency is computed using the command:
f = mirpitch(..., 'Mono')

3.5. Tonality
mirchromagram
ENERGY DISTRIBUTION ALONG PITCHES

The chromagram, also called Harmonic Pitch Class Profile, shows the distribution of energy
along the pitches or pitch classes.
• First the spectrum is computed in the logarithmic scale, with selection of, by default, the 20
highest dB, and restriction to a certain frequency range that covers an integer number of oc-
taves, and normalization of the audio waveform before computation of the FFT.
s = mirspectrum(..., ‘dB’, 20, ‘Min’, fmin, ‘Max’, fmax, ‘NormalInput’,

‘MinRes’, r, ‘OctaveRatio’, .85)
• The minimal frequency fmin is specified by the ‘Min’ option (cf. below).
• The maximal frequency fmax is at least equal to the ‘Max’ option, but the frequency range
is extended if necessary in order to obtain an integer number of octaves.
• The minimal frequency resolution of the spectrum is chosen such that even lowest chro-
mas will be segregated from the spectrum. It is based on the number of chromas per oc-
tave r (‘Res’ option , cf. below). Lowest frequencies are ignored if they do not meet this
resolution constraint, and a warning message is sent by mirspectrum (cf. ‘OctaveRatio’ key-
word).
Spectrum
20
15
magnitude
10
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000
frequency (Hz)
• The chromagram is a redistribution of the spectrum energy along the different pitches (i.e.,
“chromas”):
c = mirchromagram(s, ‘Wrap’, ‘no’)
• If the ‘Wrap’ option is selected, the representation is wrapped along the 12 pitch classes:

Chromagram
120
100
80
magnitude
60
40
20
0
G2 C3 F3 A#3 D#4 G#4 C#5 F#5 B5 E6 A6 D7 G7 C8
chroma
c = mirchromagram(c, ‘Wrap’, ‘yes’)
Chromagram
400
300
magnitude
200
100
0
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B
chroma
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirchromagram

‘dB’, 20
‘Min’, 100
mirsegment mirframe ‘Max’, fmax
‘NormalInput’
‘MinRes’, 12,
‘OctaveRatio’, .85
The ‘Min’ and ‘Max’ range used in mirspectrum can be tuned directly in mirchromagram, as
well as the ‘dB’ threshold (that can be written ‘Threshold’ as well). These parameters are set
by default to Min = 100 Hz, Max = 5000 Hz (Gómez, 2006) and Threshold = 20 dB. However, it
seems that the spectrum should span as closely as possible an integer number of octaves, in or-
der to avoid emphasizing particular pitches covered more often than others. Hence the higher
limit of the frequency range of the spectrum computation is increased accordingly. Hence for
the default parameters value (Min = 100 Hz, Max = 5000 Hz), the actual maximum frequency
fmax is set to 6400 Hz. The ‘MinRes’ value corresponds to the ‘Res’ chromagram resolution
parameter, as explained in the option section below.

mirchromagram accepts either:
• miraudio objects , where the audio waveform can be segmented (using mirsegment), de-
frame or the ‘Frame’ option, with by default a frame length of 200 ms and a hop factor of .
05),
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirchromagram(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 200 ms and a hop factor of 5% (10 ms). For the specification of other frame configu-
ration using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
OPTIONS
• c = mirchromagram(..., ‘Tuning’, t) specifies the frequency (in Hz.) associated to chroma C. De-
fault value, t = 261.6256 Hz.
• c = mirchromagram(..., ‘Triangle’) weights the contribution of each frequency with respect to

the distance with the actual frequency of the corresponding chroma.
• c = mirchromagram(..., 'Weight’, o) specifies the relative radius of the weighting window, with
respect to the distance between frequencies of successive chromas.
• o = 1: each window begins at the centers of the previous one.
• o = .5: each window begins at the end of the previous one. (default value)
• c = mirchromagram(..., ‘Res’, r) indicates the resolution of the chromagram in number of bins

per octave. Default value, r = 12.
POST-PROCESSING O P E R AT I O N S
• c = mirchromagram(..., 'Wrap’, w) specifies whether the chromagram is wrapped or not.
• w = ‘yes’: groups all the pitches belonging to same pitch classes (default value)
• w = ‘no’: pitches are considered as absolute values.
• c = mirchromagram(..., 'Center’) centers the result.

• c = mirchromagram(..., 'Normal’, n) normalizes the result, using the n-norm. The default value
is n = Inf, corresponding to a normalization by the maximum value. n = 0 toggles off the nor-
malization. Alternative keyword: ‘Norm’.
• c = mirchromagram(..., 'Pitch’, p) specifies how to label chromas in the figures.
• p = ‘yes’: chromas are labeled using pitch names (default)
• p = ‘no’: chromas are labeled using MIDI pitch numbers.
EXAMPLE
mirchromagram(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘Frame’)
Chromagram
B
A#
A
G#
chroma class
G
F#
F
E
D#
D
C#
C
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
time axis (in s.)
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Magnitude’: same as ‘Data’,
• ‘Chroma’: the chroma related to each magnitude (same as ‘Pos’),
• ‘ChromaClass’: the chroma class (‘A’, ‘A#’, ‘B’, etc.) related to each chroma,
• ‘ChromaFreq’: the central frequency of each chroma, in the unwrapped representation,
• ‘Register’: the octave position,
• ‘PitchLabel’: whether the chroma are represented as simple numeric positions (0), or as
couples (ChromaClass, Register) (1).
• ‘Wrap’: whether the chromagram is represented along all possible chromas (0), or along the
12 chroma-classes only (1). 

mirkeystrength
PROBABILITY O F K E Y C A N D I DAT E S
mirkeystrength computes the key strength, a score between -1 and +1 associated with each possi-
ble key candidate, by computing correlation coefficients between the chromagram returned by
mirchromagram, wrapped and normalized (using the ‘Normal’ option), and similar profiles repre-
senting all the possible tonality candidates (Krumhansl, 1990; Gomez, 2006).
C major C minor
Cross-Correlations
C# major C# minor
D major D minor
The resulting graph indicate the correlation coefficient for each different tonality candidate.
Key strength
maj
1
min
0.5
strength
!0.5
!1
C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B
tonal center
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirchromagram mirkeystrength

‘Wrap’
‘Normal’
mirsegment mirframe ‘Weight’, .5
‘Triangle’
For the moment, only the ‘Weight’ and ‘Triangle’ options used in mirchromagram can be
tuned directly in mirkeystrength.

mirkeystrength accepts either:
• mirchromagram objects,
• miraudio objects (same as for mirchromagram),
mirkeystrength can return several outputs:
1. the key strength itself, and
2. the mirchromagram data.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirkeystrength(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 200 ms and a hop factor of 5% (10 ms). For the specification of other frame configu-
ration using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
EXAMPLE
mirkeystrength(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘Frame’)
Key strength
Bm
A#m
Am
G#m
Gm
F#m
Fm
Em
D#m
Dm
tonal center
C#m
Cm
BM
A#M
AM
G#M
GM
F#M
FM
EM
D#M
DM
C#M
CM
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
temporal location of beginning of frame (in s.)
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT

• ‘Strength’: the key strength value for each key and each temporal position (same as ‘Data’).
The resulting matrix is distributed along two layers along the fourth dimension: a first layer
for major keys, and a second layer for minor keys.
• ‘Tonic’: the different key centres (same as ‘Pos’). 

mirkey
DESCRIPTION
Gives a broad estimation of tonal center positions and their respective clarity.
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirchromagram mirkeystrength mirpeaks mirkey
mirsegment mirframe
It consists simply of a peak picking in the mirkeystrength curve(s). Two options of mirpeaks are
accessible from mirkey:
• ‘Total’, set to 1
• ‘Contrast’, set to .1
The ‘Weight’ and ‘Triangle’ options used in mirchromagram can be changed directly in
mirkeystrength.
mirkey accepts either:
• mirkeystrength objects, where peaks have been already extracted or not,
frame or the ‘Frame’ option, with by default a frame length of 1 s and half overlapping),
mirkey can return several outputs:
1. the best key(s), i.e., the peak abscissa(e);
2. the key clarity: i.e., the key strength associated to the best key(s), i.e., the peak ordinate(s);

3. the mirkeystrength data including the picked peaks (mirpeaks).
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirkey(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of 1
s and a hop factor of 50% (0.5 s). For the specification of other frame configuration using addi-
EXAMPLE
[k c s] = mirkey(‘ragtime.wav', 'Frame')
Key
A#
G#
coefficient value
min
G maj
F#
D#
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Key clarity
0.8
0.75
coefficient value
0.7
0.65
0.6
0.55
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

Key strength
Bm
A#m
Am
G#m
Gm
F#m
Fm
Em
D#m
Dm
tonal center
C#m
Cm
BM
A#M
AM
G#M
GM
F#M
FM
EM
D#M
DM
C#M
CM
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
temporal location of beginning of frame (in s.)
mirmode
DESCRIPTION
Estimates the modality, i.e. major vs. minor, returned as a numerical value between -1 and +1:
the closer it is to +1, the more major the given excerpt is predicted to be, the closer the value is
to -1, the more minor the excerpt might be.
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirchromagram mirkeystrength mirmode
mirsegment mirframe
mirmode accepts either:
• mirkeystrength objects, where peaks have been already extracted or not,
• miraudio objects (same as for mirkey) or
mirmode can return several outputs:

1. modality itself, and
2. the mirkeystrength result used for the computation of modality.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirmode(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
1 s and a hop factor of 50% (0.5 s). For the specification of other frame configuration using ad-
ditional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
S T R AT E G I E S
• mirmode(..., ‘Best’) computes the key strength difference between the best major key (highest
key strength value) and the best minor key (lowest key strength value). (default choice)
• mirmode(..., ‘Sum’) sums up the key strength differences between all the major keys and their
relative minor keys.

mirkeysom
DESCRIPTION
Projects the chromagram (normalized using the ‘Normal’ option) into a self-organizing map
trained with the Krumhansl-Kessler profiles (modified for chromagrams) (Toiviainen and
Krumhansl, 2003; Krumhansl, 1990).
The result is displayed as a pseudo-color map, where colors correspond to Pearson correlation
values. In case of frame decomposition, the projection maps are shown one after the other in
an animated figure.
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirchromagram mirkeysom

‘Normal’
mirsegment mirframe
mirkeysom accepts either:
frame),
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirkeysom(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length
of 1 s and a hop factor of 50% (0.5 s). For the specification of other frame configuration using
EXAMPLE
mirkeysom(‘ragtime.wav’)

Self!organizing map projection of chromagram
f# d bb
A F Db
c# a f
E C Ab
e c ab
B G Eb
b g d#
D Bb Gb
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Weight’: the projection value associated to each map location (same as ‘Data’). 

mirtonalcentroid
DESCRIPTION
Calculates the 6-dimensional tonal centroid vector from the chromagram. It corresponds to a
projection of the chords along circles of fifths, of minor thirds, and of major thirds (Harte and
Sandler, 2006).
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirspectrum mirchromagram mirtonalcentroid
mirsegment mirframe
mirtonalcentroid accepts either:
frame),
mirtonalcentroid can return several outputs:
1. the tonal centroid itself, and
2. the mirchromagram data.
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirtonalcentroid(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame
length of 743 ms and a hop factor of 10% (74.3 ms). For the specification of other frame config-
uration using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section.
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Dimensions’: the index of the 6 dimensions (same as ‘Pos’),
• ‘Positions’: the position of each data within the 6-dimensional space (same as ‘Data’). 

mirhcdf
DESCRIPTION
The Harmonic Change Detection Function (HCDF) is the flux of the tonal centroid (Harte
and Sandler, 2006).
mirfilterbank
miraudio mirframe mirspectrum mirchromagram mirtonalcentroid mirflux mirhcdf
mirsegment
mirhcdf accepts either:
• mirtonalcentroid frame-decomposed objects,
• mirchromagram frame-decomposed objects,
composed into channels (using mirfilterbank). If not decomposed yet, it is decomposed
into frames (using the ‘Frame’ option, with by default a frame length of .743 s and a hop fac-
tor of .1),
FRAME DECOMPOSITION
mirhcdf(..., ‘Frame’, ...) performs first a frame decomposition, with by default a frame length of
743 ms and a hop factor of 10% (74.3 ms). For the specification of other frame configuration
using additional parameters, cf. the previous mirframe vs. ‘Frame’ section. 

mirsegment(..., ‘HCDF’)
Peak detection applied to the HCDF returns the temporal position of tonal discontinuities
that can be used for the actual segmentation of the audio sequence.
mirsegment
miraudio mirframe mirspectrum mirchromagram mirtonalcentroid mirflux mirhcdf
mirfilterbank
mirsegment(..., ‘HCDF’) can return several outputs:
2. the HCDF (mirhcdf) after peak picking (mirpeaks),
3. the tonal centroid (mirtonalcentroid), and
4. the chromagram (mirchromagram). 

4. H I G H-L EV EL FE AT URES
4.1. Structure and form
More elaborate tools have also been implemented that can carry out higher-level analyses and
transformations. In particular, audio files can be automatically segmented into a series of ho-
mogeneous sections, through the estimation of temporal discontinuities along diverse alterna-
tive features such as timbre in particular (Foote and Cooper, 2003).
mirsimatrix
DESCRIPTION
A similarity matrix shows the similarity between all possible pairs of frames from the input
data.
Dissimilarity matrix
3.5
temporal location of frame centers (in s.)
2.5
1.5
0.5
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4


mirsum
mirautocor
mirfilterbank
mircepstrum
miraudio mirframe mirmfcc

mirspectrum mirsimatrix
mirsegment
mirtonalcentroid
mirsimatrix usually accepts either:
• mirspectrum frame-decomposed objects.
• miraudio objects: in this case, the (dis)similarity matrix will be based on the spectrogram
(mirspectrum). The audio waveform is decomposed into frames if it was not decomposed
yet, and the default frame parameters – frame length of 50 ms and no overlapping – can be
changed using the ‘Frame’ option.
If the audio waveform is segmented (with mirsegment), the similarities are not computed be-
tween frames but on the contrary between segments, using Kullback-Leibler distance (Foote
and Cooper, 2003). (Removed since version 1.2, due to difficulties that have not been solved since.)
• mirkeystrength frame-decomposed objects;
• a Matlab square matrix: in this case, a mirsimatrix object is created based on the matrix given
as input, with the following options:
• The frame rate used for the matrix can be specified as second input of mirsimatrix. By de-
fault, it is set to 20 Hz.

• The input is supposed to be a similarity matrix already. If the input is in fact a dissimilarity
matrix, the keyword ‘Dissimilarity’ should be added as third argument of mirsimatrix.
OPTIONS
• mirsimatrix(..., 'Distance’, f) specifies the name of a distance function, from those proposed
in the Statistics Toolbox (help pdist). default value: f = 'cosine'
• mirsimatrix(..., 'Width’, w) specifies the size of the diagonal bandwidth, in samples, outside
which the dissimilarity will not be computed. If w is even, the actual width is w-1 samples. If
w = Inf (default value), all the matrix will be computed. If the value is non-infinite6, a Hanning
window is applied in order to smoothen the transition at the junction between the computed
and non-computed regions of the matrix.
• mirsimatrix(..., 'Dissimilarity’) return the dissimilarity matrix, which is the intermediary re-
sult before the computation of the similarity matrix. It shows the distance between each pos-
sible frame.
Dissimilarity matrix
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
• mirsimatrix(..., 'Similarity’, f) indicates the function f specifying the way the distance values
in the dissimilarity matrix are transformed into the values of the similarity matrix. Two func-
tions available:
• f = 'oneminus' (default parameter) corresponding to
f(x) = 1-x
6 and if no ‘Horizontal’ or ‘TimeLag’ transformation is specified.

• f = 'exponential' corresponding to
f(x) = exp(-x)
with a further normalization so that the values range from 0 to 1.
Similarity matrix
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
• mirsimatrix(..., 'Horizontal’) rotates the matrix 45° in order to make the first diagonal hori-
zontal:
Similarity matrix
4
relative distance between compared frames (in s.)
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4

• mirsimatrix(..., 'Horizontal’, ‘Width’, w) enables to restrict to a diagonal bandwidth only.

Similarity matrix
relative distance between compared frames (in s.)

2
1.5
0.5
!0.5
!1
!1.5
!2
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
mirsimatrix(..., ‘Width’, 20, ‘Horizontal’)
• mirsimatrix(..., 'TimeLag’) computes the time-lag matrix out of the (non-rotated) initial time-
time matrix:
Similarity matrix
4
3.5
3
temporal lag (in s.)
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
• mirsimatrix(..., 'TimeLag’, ‘Width’, w) enables to restrict to a diagonal bandwidth only:
Similarity matrix
0.4
temporal lag (in s.)
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4

mirsimatrix(..., ‘Width’, 20, ‘TimeLag’)
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
cf. §5.2 for an explanation of the use of the get method. Specific field:
• ‘DiagWidth’: the chosen value for the ‘Width’ parameter. 

mirnovelty
N OV E LT Y C U RV E
One particular structural description related to the temporal succession of moments, each
characterized by particular musical properties. The novelty curve represents the probability
along time of the presence of transitions between successive states, indicated by peaks, as well
as their relative importance, indicated by the peak heights.
mirsum
mirautocor
mirfilterbank
mircepstrum
miraudio mirframe
mirmfcc
mirspectrum mirsimatrix mirnovelty
mirsegment ‘Similarity’, ‘Exponential’

mirtonalcentroid
Some parameters related to mirsimatrix are accessible in mirnovelty:
• ‘Distance’,
• ‘Similarity’ (set here by default to ‘exponential’),
• ‘Width’ (can also be called ‘KernelSize’ or ‘Kernel’), with the default value here set to Inf. If
no value is specified, our new multi-granular strategy for novelty computation (cf. below) is
used. If on the contrary a value is specified, the kernel-based approach (cf. below) is chosen.
• ‘Horizontal’ and ‘TimeLag’ can be toggled on (both toggled off in the multi-granular strate-
gy; in the kernel-based approach, the ‘TimeLag’ representation is chosen by default).
mirnovelty usually accepts either:
• mirsimatrix objects,
• miraudio objects (same as for mirsimatrix).

• mirkeystrength frame-decomposed objects.
mirnovelty can return several outputs:
1. the novelty curve itself, and
2. the similarity matrix (mirsimatrix), horizontal.
1. K E R N E L - B A S E D A P P R O A C H
Novelty is traditionally computed by comparing – through cross-correlation – local configura-

tions along the diagonal of the similarity matrix with an ideal Gaussian checkerboard kernel
(Foote & Cooper, 2003).
Similarity matrix
3.5
2.5
1.5
0.5
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4

This method is dependent on the kernel size, focusing hence on a single level of granularity.
The kernel size is expressed in number of samples in the similarity matrix. A kernel size of N
means that it covers N rows and N columns in the similarity matrix.
Below is an example of novelty curve computed using increasing ‘Kernel’ size:

Novelty
1
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
Temporal location of frames (in s.)
Novelty
1
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
Novelty
1
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
Novelty
1
0.5
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5
To use this kernel-based approach, a value for the ‘Kernel’ size parameter has to be specified. If
no value is specified, the multi-granular approach, presented in the next paragraph, is chosen
instead:
2 . M U LT I - G R A N U L A R APPROACH
Compared to the kernel-based approach, (Lartillot, Cereghetti, Eliard & Grandjean, 2013) in-
troduces a simpler but more powerful and general method that automatically detects homoge-
neous segments of any size. For each instant in the piece, novelty is assessed by first determi-
ning the temporal scale of the preceding homogeneous part as well as the degree of contrast
between that previous part and what just comes next. The idea is to estimate the temporal
scale of the previous ending segment as well as the contrastive change before and after the en-
ding of the segment. The novelty value is then represented as a combination of the temporal
scale and the amount of contrast.
When the multi-granular approach is used for academic research, please cite the following pu-
blication:
Lartillot, O., Cereghetti, D., Eliard, K., Grandjean, D., “A simple, high-yield method for assess-
ing structural novelty”, International Conference on Music and Emotion, Jyväskylä, 2013.

POST-PROCESSING O P E R AT I O N
• mirnovelty(..., 'Normal’, n) toggles on/off the normalization of the novelty curve between the
values 0 and 1. Toggled on by default.

mirsegment(..., ‘Novelty’)
Peak detection applied to the novelty curve returns the temporal position of feature disconti-
nuities that can be used for the actual segmentation of the audio sequence.
The ‘Novelty’ keyword is actually not necessary, as this strategy is chosen by default in mirseg-
ment.
mirsegment
mirsum
mirautocor
mircepstrum
miraudio mirframe
mirmfcc
mirspectrum mirsimatrix mirnovelty mirpeaks
mirfilterbank
mirtonalcentroid
Some parameters related to mirnovelty are accessible in mirsegment: ‘Distance’, ‘Measure’

and ‘KernelSize’. Some parameters related to mirpeaks are accessible in mirsegment:
‘Total’ (set by default to Inf) and ‘Contrast’ (set to .1).
The choice of the feature used for the similarity matrix computation can be specified:
• mirsegment(..., ‘Spectrum’) will compute a mirspectrum, where some parameters can be

specified: ‘Min’, ‘Max’, ‘Normal’, ‘Window’, ‘Bark’, ‘Mel’. The default frame length is 50 ms and
no overlapping.
• mirsegment(..., ‘MFCC’) will compute a mirmfcc, where the ‘Rank’ parameter can be speci-
fied. Same default frame parameters than for ‘Spectrum’.
• mirsegment(..., ‘KeyStrength’) will compute a mirkeystrength. The default frame length is

500 ms and a hop factor of .2
• mirsegment(..., ‘Pitch’) ou mirsegment(..., ‘AucotorPitch’) will compute a mirpitch operation

and use its second output, i.e., the mirautocor, for the computation of the similarity matrix.
The default frame length is 50 ms and a hop factor of .01
• If no feature is specified, the default feature used in mirsimatrix will be chosen, i.e., the spec-
trum (mirspectrum).

The default frame parameters can be changed using the ‘WinLength’ option (in second) and the
‘Hop’ option (a value between 0 and 1).
mirsegment(..., ‘Novelty’) can return several outputs:
2. the novelty curve (mirnovelty) after peak picking (mirpeaks),
3. the similarity matrix (mirsimatrix), and
4. the features entered into the mirsimatrix operator.

4.2. Statistics
mirmean
DESCRIPTION
mirmean(f) returns the mean along frames of the feature f.
If f is decomposed into segments, the results is the series of means in successive segments.
f can be a structure array composed of features. In this case, the output will be structured the
same way.
mirstd
DESCRIPTION
mirmean(f) returns the standard deviation along frames of the feature f.
same way.
mirmedian
DESCRIPTION
mirmedian(f) returns the median along frames of the feature f.
If f is decomposed into segments, the results is the series of medians in successive segments.
same way. 

mirstat
DESCRIPTION
mirstat can be applied to any object and will return its statistics in a structure array.
• If the object is frame-decomposed, the fields of the output are:
• Mean: the average along frames;
• Std: the standard deviation along frames;
• Slope: the linear slope of the trend along frames, i.e. the derivative of the line that would
best fit the curve. The slope S is computed in a normalised representation of the curve C
– i.e., centered, with unit variance, and with a temporal scale reduced to a series T of va-
lues between 0 and 1 – as a solution in a least-square sense of the equation S*T = C;
• PeriodFreq: the frequency (in Hz.) of the maximal periodicity detected in the frame-by-
frame evolution of the values, estimated through the computation of the autocorrelation
sequence. The first descending slope starting from zero lag is removed from this analysis,
as it is not related to the periodicity of the curve. If no periodicity is detected – i.e., if
there is absolutely no peak in the autocorrelation sequence –, NaN is returned;
• PeriodAmp: the normalized amplitude of that main periodicity, i.e., such that the autocor-
relation at zero lag is identically 1.0.
• PeriodEntropy: the Shannon entropy of the autocorrelation function (cf. mirentropy).
• If the object is not frame-decomposed, the data itself is returned directly in the single field
Mean.
An additional field FileNames indicates the file name following the same order used when dis-
playing each numerical result.
N A N - F I LT E R
mirstat automatically discard any NaN value contained in the input data.
MANAGEMENT O F S T RU C T U R E A R R AY S
If the input is already a structure array, the output will follows the same field decomposition
(and all subfields as well) of the structure array, and will replace each final node with its corres-
ponding mirstat structure array result.  

mirhisto
DESCRIPTION
mirhisto can be applied to any object and will return its corresponding histogram. The data is
binned into equally spaced containers.
4 Histogram of Audio waveform
x 10
8
6
number of occurrences
0
!0.1 !0.08 !0.06 !0.04 !0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
values
OPTIONS
• mirhisto(..., 'Number’, n) specifies the number of containers. Default value : n = 10.
• mirhisto(..., 'Ampli’) adds the amplitude of the elements, instead of simply counting then.
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Weight’: the number of elements associated to each container (same as ‘Data’),
• ‘Bins’: the range of value associated to each bin (same as ‘Pos’). A first layer of values (along
the third matrix dimension) indicates the minimal value for each bin, a second layer indicates
the maximal values. 

mirzerocross
DESCRIPTION
mirzerocross counts the number of times the signal crosses the X-axis (or, in other words,
changes sign).
This function has already defined in the timbre section (§3.3): applied directly to audio wave-
form, mirzerocross is an indicator of noisiness.
But actually mirzerocross accepts any input data type.

Audio waveform
0.0&
0.02
0.01
amplitude
!0.01
!0.02
!0.0&
1.701 1.702 1.70& 1.704 1.705 1.706 1.707 1.708 1.709
time (s)
OPTIONS
• mirzerocross(..., ‘Per’, p) precises the temporal reference for the rate computation. Possible val-
ues:
• p = 'Second': number of sign-changes per second (Default).
• p = 'Sample': number of sign-changes divided by the total number of samples. The 'Second’
option returns a result equal to the one returned by the 'Sample’ option multiplied by the
sampling rate.
• mirzerocross(..., 'Dir’, d) precises the definition of sign change. Possible values:
• d = 'One': number of sign-changes from negative to positive only (or, equivalently, from
positive to negative only). (Default)
• d = 'Both': number of sign-changes in both ways. The 'Both' option returns a result equal to
twice the one returned by the 'One’ option.

mircentroid
DESCRIPTION
mircentroid returns the centroid of the data.
E X P L A N AT I O N
An important and useful description of the shape of a distribution can be obtained through
the use of its moments. The first moment, called the mean, is the geometric center (centroid) of
the distribution and is a measure of central tendency for the random variable.
µ1 = xf (x)dx
µ1
INPUTS
Any data can be used as input.
If the input is an audio waveform, a file name, or the ‘Folder’ keyword, the centroid is computed
on the spectrum (spectral centroid). For quasi-silent frames, as specified by the ‘MinRMS’ op-
tion, NaN is returned.
If the input is a series of peak lobes produced by mirpeaks(..., ‘Extract’), the centroid will be
computed for each of these lobes separately.
OPTION
• When the input contains peaks (using mirpeaks), mircentroid(..., ‘Peaks’, i) will compute the
centroids of the distribution of peaks. The argument i accepts two arguments:
• i = ‘NoInterpol’: the centroid is computed on the non-interpolated peaks (default choice),
• i = ‘Interpol’: the centroid is computed on the interpolated peaks (cf. ‘Interpol’ option in
mirpeaks).

• mircentroid(..., ‘MinRMS’, m) specifies the threshold m, as a value from 0 to 1, for the detec-
input (for spectral centroid, the input is each frame of the spectrogram, etc.) is below m
times the highest RMS value over the frames, NaN is returned. default value: m = .005
• mircentroid(..., ‘MaxEntropy’, h) specifies the threshold h, as a value from 0 to 1, for the de-
tection of quasi-flat frames, for which no value is given. For a given frame, if the entropy of
the input (for spectral centroid, the input is each frame of the spectrogram, etc.) is over m,
NaN is returned. default value: m = .95 

mirspread
DESCRIPTION
mirspread returns the standard deviation of the data.
The second central moment, called the variance, is usually given the symbol sigma squared and is
defined as:
⇥ 2 = µ2 = (x µ1 )2 f (x)dx
µ1
Being the squared deviation of the random variable from its mean value, the variance is always
positive and is a measure of the dispersion or spread of the distribution. The square root of the
variance is called the standard deviation, and is more useful in describing the nature of the dis-
tribution since it has the same units as the random variable. (Koch)
INPUTS
If the input is an audio waveform, a file name, or the ‘Folder’ keyword, the spread is computed
on the spectrum (spectral spread).
If the input is a series of peak lobes produced by mirpeaks(..., ‘Extract’), the spread will be com-
puted for each of these lobes separately.
OPTION
• mirspread(..., ‘MinRMS’, m) specifies the threshold m, as a value from 0 to 1, for the detection
of quasi-silent frames, for which no value is given. For a given frame, if the RMS of the input
(for spectral spread, the input is each frame of the spectrogram, etc.) is below m times the
highest RMS value over the frames, NaN is returned. default value: m = .01 

mirskewness
DESCRIPTION
mirskewness returns the coefficient of skewness of the data.
The third central moment is called the skewness and is a measure of the symmetry of the distribu-
tion. The skewness can have a positive value in which case the distribution is said to be posi-
tively skewed with a few values much larger than the mean and therefore a long tail to the
right. A negatively skewed distribution has a longer tail to the left. A symmetrical distribution
has a skewness of zero. (Koch)
µ3 = (x µ1 )3 f (x)dx
The coefficient of skewness is the ratio of the skewness to the standard deviation raised to the
third power.
µ3
⇥3
The coefficient of skewness has more convenient units than does the skewness and often
ranges from -3.0 to 3.0 for data from natural systems. Again, a symmetrical distribution has a
coefficient of skewness of zero. A positive coefficient of skewness often indicates that the dis-
tribution exhibits a concentration of mass toward the left and a long tail to the right whereas a
negative value generally indicates the opposite. (Koch)
-3 <0 >0 +3
INPUTS
If the input is an audio waveform, a file name, or the ‘Folder’ keyword, the skewness is compu-
ted on the spectrum (spectral skewness).

If the input is a series of peak lobes produced by mirpeaks(..., ‘Extract’), the skewness will be

mirkurtosis
DESCRIPTION
mirkurtosis returns the (excess) kurtosis, of the data.
The fourth standardized moment is defined as,
µ4
3
⇥4
Kurtosis is more commonly defined as the fourth cumulant divided by the square of the vari-
ance of the probability distribution, equivalent to:
µ4
3
⇥4
which is known as excess kurtosis. The "minus 3" at the end of this formula is often explained as
a correction to make the kurtosis of the normal distribution equal to zero. Another reason can
be seen by looking at the formula for the kurtosis of the sum of random variables. Because of
the use of the cumulant, if Y is the sum of n independent random variables, all with the same
distribution as X, then Kurt[Y] = Kurt[X] / n, while the formula would be more complicated if
kurtosis were simply defined as fourth standardized moment. (Wikipedia)
-2 <0 0 >0
INPUTS
If the input is an audio waveform, a file name, or the ‘Folder’ keyword, the kurtosis is computed
on the spectrum (spectral kurtosis).
If the input is a series of peak lobes produced by mirpeaks(..., ‘Extract’), the kurtosis will be

mirflatness
DESCRIPTION
mirflatness returns the flatness of the data.
The flatness indicates whether the distribution is smooth or spiky, and results from the simple
ratio between the geometric mean and the arithmetic mean:
⌅⇤
N N 1
n=0 x(n)
PN 1 ⇥
n=0 x(n)
N
INPUTS
If the input is an audio waveform, a file name, or the ‘Folder’ keyword, the flatness is computed
on the spectrum (spectral flatness).
OPTION
• mirflatness(..., ‘MinRMS’, m) specifies the threshold m, as a value from 0 to 1, for the detec-
input (for spectral flatness, the input is each frame of the spectrogram, etc.) is below m times
the highest RMS value over the frames, NaN is returned. default value: m = .01 

mirentropy
DESCRIPTION
mirentropy returns the relative Shannon (1948) entropy of the input. The Shannon entropy, used
in information theory, is based on the following equation:
where b is the base of the logarithm.
In order to obtain a measure of entropy that is independent on the sequence length, mirentropy
actually returns the relative entropy, computed as follows:
H(p) = -sum(p.*log(p)) /log(length(p));
Shannon entropy offers a general description of the input curve p, and indicates in particular
whether it contains predominant peaks or not. Indeed, if the curve is extremely flat, corres-
ponding to a situation of maximum uncertainty concerning the output of the random variable
X of probability mass function p(xi), then the entropy is maximal. Reversely, if the curve dis-
plays only one very sharp peak, above a flat and low background, then the entropy is minimal,
indicating a situation of minimum uncertainty as the output will be entirely governed by that
peak.
The equation of Shannon entropy can only be applied to functions p(xi) that follow the charac-
teristics of a probability mass function: all the values must be non-negative and sum up to 1.
Inputs of mirentropy are transformed in order to respect these constraints:
• The non-negative values are replaced by zeros (i.e., half-wave rectification).
• The remaining data is scaled such that it sums up to 1.
INPUTS
If the input is an audio waveform, a file name, or the ‘Folder’ keyword, the entropy is computed
on the spectrum (spectral entropy).
OPTION
• mirentropy(..., ‘Center’) centers the input data before half-wave rectification.

• mirentropy(..., ‘MinRMS’, m), when the input is an audio waveform, a spectrum or a cep-
strum, specifies the threshold m, as a value from 0 to 1, for the detection of quasi-silent
frames, for which no value is given. For a given frame, if the RMS of the input (for spectral
entropy, the input is each frame of the spectrogram, etc.) is below m times the highest RMS
value over the frames, NaN is returned. default value: m = .005 

mirfeatures
DESCRIPTION
mirfeatures computes a large set of features, and returns them in a structure array. If the result
is stored in a variable f, for instance, then the features are organized as follows:
• in a dynamics field,
• f.dynamics.rms{1}: the frame-based RMS (mirrms), that can be accessed using the command:
• a fluctuation field, containing:
• f.fluctuation.peak{1}: a fluctuation summary (mirfluctuation) with its highest peak (mirpeak),
• f.fluctuation.centroid{1}: the centroid (mircentroid) of the fluctuation summary;
• in a rhythm field,
• a tempo field, containing:
• f.rhythm.tempo{1}: a frame-based tempo estimation (mirtempo),
• f.rhythm.tempo{2}: the autocorrelation function used for the tempo estimation;
• an attack field, containing:
• a time field, with:
• f.rhythm.attack.time{1}: the attack times (mirattacktime) of the events,
• f.rhythm.attack.time{2}: the envelope curve used for the event detection (mirevents);
• a slope field, with:
• f.rhythm.attack.slope{1}: the attack slopes (mirattackslope) of the events;
• in a timbre field,
• f.timbre.zerocross{1}: the frame-decomposed zero-crossing rate (mirzerocross),
• f.timbre.centroid{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral centroid (mircentroid),
• f.timbre.brightness{1}: the frame-decomposed brightness (mirbrightness),
• f.timbre.spread{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral spread (mirspread),
• f.timbre.skewness{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral skewness (mirskewness),
• f.timbre.kurtosis{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral kurtosis (mirkurtosis),

• f.timbre.rolloff95{1}: the frame-decomposed roll-off (mirrolloff), using a 95 % threshold,
• f.timbre.rolloff85{1}: the frame-decomposed roll-off, using a 85 % threshold,
• f.timbre.spectentropy{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral entropy (mirentropy),
• f.timbre.flatness{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral flatness (mirflatness),
• a roughness field, containing:
• f.timbre.roughness{1}: the frame-decomposed roughness (mirroughness),
• f.timbre.roughness{2}: the spectrogram, containing the peaks used for the roughness es-
timation;
• an irregularity field, containing:
• f.timbre.irregularity{1}: the frame-decomposed irregularity (mirregularity),
• f.timbre.irregularity{2}: the spectrogram, containing the peaks used for the irregularity
estimation;
• an inharmonicity field, containing:
• f.timbre.inharmonicity{1}: the frame-decomposed inharmonicity (mirinharmonicity),
• f.timbre.inharmonicity{2}: the spectrogram used for the inharmonicity estimation;
• f.timbre.mfcc{1}: the frame-decomposed MFCCs (mirmfcc),
• f.timbre.dmfcc{1}: the frame-decomposed delta-MFCCs,
• f.timbre.ddmfcc{1}: the frame-decomposed delta-delta-MFCCs,
• a lowenergy field, containing:
• f.timbre.lowenergy{1}: the low energy rate (mirlowenergy),
• f.timbre.lowenergy{2}: the RMS energy curve used for the low energy rate estimation;
• f.spectralflux{1}: the frame-decomposed spectral flux (mirflux);
• in a pitch field,
• f.pitch.salient{1}: the frame-decomposed pitches (mirpitch),
• a chromagram field, containing:
• f.pitch.chromagram.peak{1}: an unwrapped chromagram (mirchromagram) and its highest

peak,

• f.pitch.chromagram.centroid{1} field: the centroid of the chromagram;
• in a tonal field,
• f.tonal.keyclarity{1}: the frame-decomposed key clarity (second output of mirkey),
• f.tonal.mode{1}: the frame-decomposed mode (mirmode),
• f.tonal.hcdf{1}: the frame-decomposed HCDF (mirhcdf).
OPTION
• mirfeatures(..., ‘Stat’) returns the statistics of the features instead of the complete features
themselves. In this way, the complete results are not accumulated in the RAM, preventing
memory shortage problems.
• mirfeatures(..., ‘Segment’, t) segments the audio sequence at the temporal positions indicated
in the array t (in s.), and analyzes each segment separately.

mirmap
When mirmap is used for academic research, please cite the following publications:
Olivier Lartillot, Tuomas Eerola, Petri Toiviainen, Jose Fornari, "Multi-feature modeling of
pulse clarity: Design, validation, and optimization", International Conference on Music Information
Retrieval, Philadelphia, 2008.
DESCRIPTION
mirmap(predictors_file, ratings_file) performs a statistical mapping between ratings associated to a
set of audio recordings, and a set of variables computed for the same set of audio recordings. It
might be useful in particular when the set of predictors is large and diverse.
• The predictors were saved in one or several text file(s) whose name predictors_file (or a cell ar-
ray of file name) is given as first argument of the mirmap function. This text file is the result
of the exportation (using mirexport) of a chosen analysis performed using MIRtoolbox, on the
folder of audio files.
• The ratings are saved in a one or several text file(s) whose name ratings_file (or a cell array of
file name) is given as second argument of the mirmap function. This text file contains a simple
column of values, with one value for each file analyzed in the folder of audio files under study,
using the same ordering of files as for the predictors, i.e., a lexicographic order of file name.
The routine detects all features not sufficiently normal, based on a Lilliefors test (using Sta-
tistics Toolbox’s lillietest) at the 5% significance level. Those non-normal features are then nor-
malized using an optimization algorithm that automatically finds optimal Box-Cox transforma-
tions () of the data, ensuring that their distributions become sufficiently Gaussian, which is a
prerequisite for correlation estimation. Features hence normalized that are still not considered
as normal (this times using a more tolerant significance level of 1%) are then excluded from
further analyses. They are listed in the Command Window under the heading “Excluded:”.
From the selected features, only those whose correlation with the ratings is sufficiently statisti-
cally significant (with a p-value lower than .05) are selected.
The selected features are ordered from the most correlated to the least correlated ones. Fea-
tures that are not sufficiently independent with respect to the better scoring ones (with a nor-
malized crosscorrelation exceeding .6) are deleted as well.
EXAMPLE
f = mirfeatures(‘Folder’)

mirexport(‘mypredictors.txt’, f)
mirmap(‘mypredictors.txt’, ‘myratings.txt’)
OUTPUT
mirmap returns a structure array, with the following fields:
• normal: the correlation between the normalized features and the ratings:
• cor: the correlation value,
• pval: the related p value;
• significant: the correlation between the statistically significant features and the ratings:
• cor: the correlation value,
• pval: the related p value,
• inter: the cross-correlations with the other features,
• fields: the feature name,
• the resulting alpha and lambda values of the Box-Cox optimization;
• best: the correlation between the independent best features and the ratings:
• index: the indices of chosen features among the significant ones,
• fields: the feature name,
• the related Box-Cox alpha and lambda values.
T E X T D I S P L AY
Various information are output in the Command Window:
• the excluded features (cf. below)
• the finally selected features are then displayed, including:
• the index among the significant features (best.index),
• the feature name,
• the correlation value with respect to the rating,
• the worse cross-correlation with respect to better rating features.

• the result of a step-wise regression (using Statistics Toolbox stepwisefit), showing the succes-
sive steps, and the final results.
• the result of a normalized step-wise regression, this time centering and scaling each feature
(using stepwisefit option ‘scale’).
• The list of features included in the final regression.
GRAPHICAL OUTPUT
The correlation obtained by each of the best independent features are represented by a series
of horizontal bars with best results at the top and worse results at the bottom. The abscissa
axis represents the correlation values, that can be either positive or negative. The width of
each bar indicates the independence of each feature with respect to the higher ones, and is
computed as one minus the worse normalized cross-correlation. Finally, the color indicates the
p-value, following the color scale given by the colorbar on the right of the figure: cold colors
for statistically significant correlations, and warm colors for correlations of limited signifi-
cance.
The figure below show a real-life example of useful application of the mirmap script. A large set
of predictors were computed and stored in a highly structured array, composed of a hierarchi-
cal set of cells and structures corresponding to various methods for the predictor estimation.
Correlation with rating pulc.txt
flux1_nc1_ft1_ord3_log1_hwr2_res1_su1_tempo_Pulseclarity_Mean
flux1_nc1_ft1_ord1_log2_hwr2_res1_su1_kurtosis_Pulseclarity(AverageofKurtosisofEnvelopeautocorrelation)_Mean
flux1_nc1_ft2_ord2_log1_hwr2_res2_su2_interf_Pulseclarity_Mean
flux1_nc1_ft2_ord2_log1_hwr2_res3_su3_kurtosis_Pulseclarity(AverageofKurtosisofEnvelopeautocorrelation)_Mean
flux1_nc1_ft2_ord1_log1_hwr2_res1_su2_interf0_Pulseclarity_Mean 0.04
flux1_nc1_ft2_ord2_log1_hwr2_res2_su1_interf0_Pulseclarity_Mean
flux1_nc1_ft2_ord2_log1_hwr2_res3_su2_entropy1_Pulseclarity(EntropyofEnvelopeautocorrelation)_Mean
flux1_nc1_ft1_ord1_log1_hwr1_res2_su1_entropy0_Pulseclarity(EntropyofEnvelopeautocorrelation)_Mean 0.035
flux1_nc1_ft2_ord1_log2_hwr2_res1_su2_interf_Pulseclarity_Mean 0.025
fea1_nc1_ft1_attack_Pulseclarity(AverageofAttackSlope)_Mean
fea1_nc1_ft1_xtrem_Pulseclarity_Mean
−0.5 −0.4 −0.3 −0.2 −0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5

4.3. Predictions
miremotion
The current version of miremotion is calibrated with version 1.3. Its use with more
recent versions (1.3.1, ..., 1.4, ...) gives distorted results.
When miremotion is used for academic research, please cite the following publication:
Tuomas Eerola, Olivier Lartillot, Petri Toiviainen, "Prediction of Multidimensional Emotional

Ratings in Music From Audio Using Multivariate Regression Models", International Conference
on Music Information Retrieval, Kobe, 2009.
DESCRIPTION
Emotions evoked in music is usually described along two opposite paradigms (cf. Eerola, Lar-
tillot, Toiviainen, 2009 for a literature review and a study of their interdependencies):
• Either as a decomposition into a few basic emotions. In miremotion, the 5 classes are happy,
sad, tender, anger, fear.
• Either as a multi-dimensional space where the three dimensions, used in miremotion, are ac-
tivity (or energetic arousal), valence (a pleasure-displeasure continuum) and tension (or tense
arousal).
miremotion attempts to predict such description of emotion based on the analysis of the audio
and musical contents of the recordings. Hence the output of miremotion corresponds to this
underlying localization of emotional content within the 5 basic classes and within the 3 dimen-
sions.
Each class or dimension is supposed to have values spanned in the interval [1,7]. Value 1 would
correspond to very low value, and value 7 to very high value. This convention is used because
the models are based on listeners' emotional ratings that were collected exactly the same way,
as it corresponds to a classical Libert scale used in experimental psychology.
But even if the model was constructed using observation spanning in the interval [1,7], particu-
lar audio examples, not considered in the training, can extend beyond that range. So the inter-
val [0,8] looks like a more probable range of value for these dimensions and concepts.

Stimulus set
fear
sad
tension
anger
happy
tender
ac
tiv
ity n ce
v ale
Comparison between basic concepts of emotions (happy, sad, tender, anger, fear) and emotion dimensions
(activity, valence, tension) (Eerola, Lartillot and Toiviainen, 2009).
PREDICTIVE MODELS
Following a systematic statistical methodology, a mapping has been found between each emo-
tion concept or dimension and various sets of audio and musical features. The details of the
procedure is given in (Eerola, Lartillot and Toiviainen, 2009).
The implemented models are based on multiple linear regression with 5 best predictors (MLR
option in the paper). In this first version of miremotion, the Box-Cox transformations have been
removed until the normalization values have been established with a large sample of music.
• The five factors contributing to the activity score are:
• RMS averaged along frames (β = 0.6664)
• Maximum value of summarized fluctuation (β = 0.6099)
• Spectral centroid averaged along frames (β = 0.4486)

• Spectral spread averaged along frames (β = -0.4639)
• Entropy of the smoothed and collapsed spectrogram, averaged along frames (β = 0.7056)
• The five factors contributing to the valence score are:
• Standard deviation of RMS along frames (β = -0.3161)
• Key clarity (2nd output of mirkey) averaged along frames (β = 0.8802)
• Mode averaged along frames (β = 0.4565)
• Averaged spectral novelty (β = 0.4015)
• The five factors contributing to the tension score are:
• Standard deviation of RMS along frames (β = 0.5382)
• Maximum value of summarized fluctuation (β = -0.5406)
• Key clarity (2nd output of mirkey) averaged along frames (β = -0.6808)
• Averaged HCDF (β = 0.8629)
• Averaged novelty from unwrapped chromagram (β = -0.5958)
• The five factors contributing to the happy score are:
• Spectral spread averaged along frames (β = -0.3965)
• Standard deviation of the position of the maximum of the unwrapped chromagram (β =

0.4047)
• Mode averaged along frames (β = 0.6620)
• The five factors contributing to the sad score are:
• Spectral spread averaged along frames (β = 0.4324)
• Standard deviation of the position of the maximum of the unwrapped chromagram (β = -

0.3137)
• Mode averaged along frames (β = -0.5201)

• Averaged HCDF (β = -0.6017)
• Averaged novelty from wrapped chromagram (β = 0.4493)
• The five factors contributing to the tender score are:
• Spectral centroid averaged along frames (β = -0.2709)
• Standard deviation of roughness (β = -0.4904)
• Averaged HCDF (β = -0.3995)
• Averaged spectral novelty (β = 0.3391)
• The five factors contributing to the anger score are:
• Roughness averaged along frames (β = 0.5517)
• Entropy of the smoothed and collapsed spectrogram, averaged along frames (β = 0.2821)
• Averaged novelty from unwrapped chromagram (β = -0.2971)
• The five factors contributing to the fear score are:
• Standard deviation of RMS along frames (β = 0.4069)
• Averaged attack time (β = -0.6388)
• Maximum value of summarized fluctuation (β = -0.2538)
• Mode averaged along frames (β = -0.3144)
For later version of MIRtoolbox, we plan to revise the coefficients in order to
(a) force the output range between 0 - 1 and
(b) ground them on alternative models and materials (training sets).
A classifier of emotion concepts based also on audio features is also under development.

RMS low energy rate dynamics
centroid
spread timbre
entropy
roughness
audio frame spectrum collapsing entropy
harmonic change harmony
structure key clarity

tonal
analysis
majorness
novelty
centroid
chromagram
deviation register
autocorrelation pitch estimation salient pitch
fluctuation
envelope tempo rhythm

extraction frame autocorrelation
pulse clarity
event density
attack slope articulation

attack estimation
attack time
Audio and musical features founding the prediction of emotion. The colors associated to each feature corres-
ponds to the correlating emotions, following the same color code that in the previous figure (Eerola, Lar-
tillot and Toiviainen, 2009).
OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS
• miremotion(..., ‘Frame’, l, h) predicts the emotional content for each successive frame of length
l, and with a hop factor of h. By default, l = 1 second and no overlapping.
• miremotion(..., ‘Dimensions’, n) indicates the number of emotion dimensions to output (0, 2

or 3(. By default, n = 3. Alternatively, these dimensions can be listed:
• miremotion(..., ‘Activity’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Valence’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Tension’)
A value n = 2 will output Activity and Valence only.
• miremotion(..., ‘Arousal’) corresponds to miremotion(..., ‘Activity’, ‘Tension’).

• miremotion(..., ‘Concepts’) outputs all the emotion concepts (chosen by default). Alternatively,
these concepts can be listed:
• miremotion(..., ‘Happy’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Sad’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Tender’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Anger’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Fear’)
• miremotion(..., ‘Concepts’, 0) excludes all emotion concepts in the results.
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Dim’: the list of emotion dimensions taken into consideration,
• ‘DimData’: the score associated with each of these emotion dimensions,
• ‘Class’: the list of emotion classes taken into consideration,
• ‘ClassData’: the score associated with each of these emotion classes,
• ‘ActivityFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the activity
score (in the same order as presented above),
• ‘ValenceFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the valence
• ‘TensionFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the tension
• ‘HappyFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the happy
• ‘SadFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the sad score (in
the same order as presented above),
• ‘TenderFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the tender
• ‘AngerFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the anger score
(in the same order as presented above),

• ‘FearFactors’: the value associated with each of the factors contributing to the fear score (in
the same order as presented above).

mirclassify
DESCRIPTION
mirclassify(features) classifies along the analytic feature(s) features using cross-validation. Features
can be either one feature, or a cell array of features. All features should be computed using
‘Folders’ on a same folder of folders audio files: the main folder should be composed of a certain
number of sub-folders of same size, corresponding to the different classes. The name of each
sub-folder will be used as the name of the corresponding class.
The classification is carried out using leave-one-out cross-validation.
misclassify requires the Netlab toolbox.
You can also integrate your own arrays of numbers computed outside MIRtoolbox as part of the
features. These arrays should be given as matrices where each successive column is the analysis
of each successive file.
EXAMPLE
mirclassify(mirmfcc(‘Folders’))
mirclassify({mirmfcc(‘Folders’), mircentroid(‘Folders’)})
OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS
• mirclassify(..., 'Nearest’) uses the minimum distance strategy. (by default)
• mirclassify(..., 'Nearest’, k) uses the k-nearest-neighbour strategy. Default value: k = 1, corre-

sponding to the minimum distance strategy.
• mirclassify(..., 'GMM', ng) uses a gaussian mixture model. Each class is modeled by at most ng
gaussians. Default value: ng = 1.
• Additionnally, the type of mixture model can be specified, using the set of value proposed
in Netlab’s gmm function: i.e., 'spherical’, 'diag’, 'full’ (default value) and 'ppca’. (cf. help gmm)
ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Classes’: the class associated to each test sample (same as ‘Data’),
• ‘Correct’: the correctness of the classification, from 0 to 1, for each cross-validation fold. 

mircluster
DESCRIPTION
• mircluster(a, f, ...), where a is one or several audio files already segmented (using mirsegment), and f
is an analysis of the same data, clusters the segments in the audio sequence(s) contained in
the audio object a, along the analytic feature(s) f, using the k-means strategy.
• The analytic feature(s) f should not be frame decomposed. Frame-decomposed data

should first be summarized, using for instance mirmean or mirstd.
• Multiple analytic features have to be grouped into one array of cells.
• mircluster(d, ...), where d is any frame-decomposed feature computed using MIRtoolbox, clusters
the segments in the audio sequence(s) contained in the audio object a, along the analytic fea-
ture(s) f, using the k-means strategy. Multiple analytic features have to be grouped into one
array of cells.
mircluster simply calls the kmeans_clusters function from the SOM toolbox (that is part of MIR-
toolbox distribution) with the data contained in the MIRtoolbox objects provided as input. This
is the only use of SOM toolbox in MIRtoolbox.
EXAMPLE
• Clustering of audio segments:
sg = mirsegment(a);
mircluster(sg, mirmfcc(sg))
mircluster(sg, {mirmfcc(sg), mircentroid(sg)})
• Clustering of frames:
cc = mirmfcc(a,'Frame');
mircluster(cc)
OPTIONAL ARGUMENT :
• mircluster(..., n) indicates the maximal number of clusters. Default value: n = 2.
• mircluster(..., 'Runs’, r) indicates the maximal number of runs. Default value: r = 5.

ACCESSIBLE OUTPUT
• ‘Clusters’: a structured descriptions of the clustered reduction (centroids, reduction of the

initial representation as a sequence of clusters, etc.), 

4.4. Similarity and Retrieval
Operators have been added for the comparison between audio files and for query by examples.
mirdist
DESCRIPTION
mirdist(x,y) evaluates the distance between audio files along a particular representation speci-
fied by the user, corresponding to audio or musical features computed using MIRtoolbox. The
input variables x and y are the obtained representations computed for the chosen audio files.
x should corresponding to the representation of one particular file, whereas y can correspond
to the representation of either one particular file:
x = mirmfcc(‘file1.mp3’);
y = mirmfcc(‘file2.mp3’);
mirdist(x,y)
or a folder of files:
x = mirmfcc(‘file1.mp3’);
y = mirmfcc(‘Folder’);
mirdist(x,y)
• If x and y are not decomposed into frames,
mirdist(..., metric) specifies the distance method metric, following the same list as used in
Matlab pdist command (cf. help pdist). Default value: metric = ‘Cosine’.
• If x and y are composed of clustered frames (using mircluster), the cluster signatures are com-
pared using Earth Mover Distance (Logan and Salomon, 2001).
• If x and y contains peaks, the vectors representing the peak distributions are compared using
Euclidean distance (used with mirnovelty in Jacobson, 2006). 

mirquery
DESCRIPTION
mirquery(q,b), where
• q is the analysis of one audio file and
• b is the analysis of a folder of audio files,
according to the same MIRtoolbox feature, returns the name of the audio files in the database b
in an increasing distance to q with respect to the chosen feature, where the distance is com-
puted using mirdist.
mirquery(d), where d is the distance between one audio file and a folder of audio file, according
to a MIRtoolbox feature, returns the name of the audio files in an increasing distance d.
OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS
• mirquery(..., ‘Best’, n) returns the name of the n closest audio files.
• mirquery(.., ‘Distance’, metric) specifies the distance method metric to use (cf. mirdist). Default
value: metric = ‘Cosine’.
The successive results can then be played using mirplay. 

4.5. Exportation
mirgetdata
DESCRIPTION
mirgetdata return the data contained in the input in a structure that can be used for further
computation outside MIRtoolbox.
O U T P U T F O R M AT
• If the input is based on one non-segmented audio sequence, the result is returned as a ma-
trix. The columns of the matrix usually correspond to the successive frames of the audio sig-
nal. The third dimension of the matrix corresponds to the different channels of a filterbank.
• If the input corresponds to a set of audio sequences, and if each sequence has same number
of frames, the corresponding resulting matrices are concatenated columnwise one after the
other. If the number of rows of the elementary matrices varies, the missing values are re-
placed by NaN in the final matrix. On the contrary, if the number of columns (i.e., frames)
differs, then the result remains a cell array of matrices.
• Idem if the input corresponds to one or several segmented audio sequence(s).
INPUT AND OUTPUT

• If the input is a key strength curve, the fourth dimension distinguishes between major and
minor keys. i.e.:
• d(:,:,:,1) is the keystrength for the major keys, and
• d(:,:,:,2) is the keystrength for the minor keys.
• If the input is a key estimation, two output are returned:
a. the keys (from 1 to 12) and
b. the modes (1 for major, 2 for minor).
• If the input is the result of a peak detection, two output are returned:
a. the position of the peaks and
b. the value corresponding to these peaks, in the units predefined for this data.

What is returned by mirgetdata is no more a MIRtoolbox object, but just a Matlab array (or ma-
trix). So of course, if you display such array using Matlab plot function, what you get is a curve
without any proper X-axis annotation. (So by default the X-axis simply indicates the sample
indices).

mirexport
mirexport(filename, ...) exports statistical information related to diverse data into a text file
called filename.
mirexport(‘Workspace’, ...) instead directly output the statistical information in a structure ar-
ray saved in the Matlab workspace. This structure contains three fields:
• filenames: the name of the original audio files,
• types: the name of the features,
• data: the data.
The exported data should be related to the same initial audio file or the same ordered set of
audio files.
The data listed after the first arguments can be:
• any feature computed in MIRtoolbox. What is exported is the statistical description of the
feature (using the mirstat function).
➡ If the keyword mirexport(..., ‘Raw’) is added, what is exported is the complete, raw, feature
data instead. Feature data are stored in columns, and arrays shorter than others are complet-
ed with NaN values in order to obtain a matrix.
• any structure array of such features. Such as the ouput of the mirstat function.
• any cell array of such features.
• the name of a text file. The text file is imported with the Matlab importdata command. Each
line of the file should contains a fixed number of data delimited by tabulations. The first line,
or 'header', indicates the name of each of these columns.
The file format of the output can be either:
• a text file. It follows the same text file representation as for the input text files. The first col-
umn of the matrix indicates the name of the audio files. The text file can be opened in Mat-
lab, or in a spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel, where the data matrix can be au-
tomatically reconstructed.
• an attribute-relation file. It follows the ARFF standard, used in particular in the WEKA data
mining environment.
If the audio files were initially labelled using the ‘Label’ option in miraudio, then these labels are
automatically indicated as classes in the ARFF output file.

5. A DVAN CED US E OF MI RTOOLBOX
5.1. Parallel processing
mirparallel does not work any more for Matlab 2013b and more recent. If you would like MIR-
toolbox to be developed for parallel processing or for other purposes, and if you have any fund-
ing to suggest, please contact us.
When ‘Folder’ or ‘Folders’ is used, several audio files can be analysed in parallel using several pa-
rallel Matlab sessions running on the different processors and/or processor cores of your com-
puter.
This requires MathWorks’ Parallel Computing Toolbox.
MIRPARALLEL
mirparallel(1) toggles on parallel processing.
mirparallel(N) with N>1 specifies the number of pools as N. If on the contrary N is equal to 1 or
to Inf, the default number of pools specified by the default cluster profile is used instead.
mirparallel(0) toggles back off parallel processing.
mirparallel without argument returns the current setting, either 0, 1, or an integer N higher
than 1. 

5.2. Progressive storage of stats
When ‘Folder’ or ‘Folders’ is used, the statistical result of each audio file can be progressively ad-
ded to a text file called mirtemporary.txt.
M I RT E M P O R A RY
mirtemporary(1) toggles on the progressive storage of stat results.
mirtemporary(0) toggles back off the progressive storage of stat results.
mirtemporary without argument returns the current setting, either 0 or 1. 

5.3. Interface preferences
M I RV E R B O S E
mirverbose(0) toggles off the display by MIRtoolbox of minor informations in the Matlab Com-
mand Window (such as "Computing mirfunction ...").
mirverbose(1) toggles back on the display of such information.
mirverbose without argument returns the current setting, either 0 or 1.
M I RWA I T B A R
mirwaitbar(0) toggles off the display by MIRtoolbox of waitbar windows.
mirwaitbar(1) toggles back on the display of these waitbar windows.
mirwaitbar without argument returns the current setting, either 0 or 1.

5.4. get
get returns fields of MIRtoolbox objects.
General fields used by most objects are the following:
• ‘Data’: the computed values, stored in a cell array, where each cell, corresponding to one au-
dio file, is itself a cell array, where each cell, corresponding to one segment, is a matrix, where
columns indicate successive frames, and where multiple channels are represented in the 3rd
dimension.
cell array
cell array cell array
matrix matrix matrix matrix
segm1 segm2 ... segm1 segm2 ...

file1 file2 ...
• ‘Pos’: the X-axis abscissae related to the Y-axis ordinates given by ‘Data’, and stored in the
same way as for ‘Data’.
• ‘Unit’: the name of the unit in which the values are represented,
• ‘Sampling’: the sampling rate of the data, stored in a array of numbers, one number for each
audio file.
• ‘Length’: the duration of the input audio signal, in number of samples.
• ‘NBits’: the resolutions in number of bits of the initial audio file, stored in the same ways as
for ‘Sampling’.
• ‘Name’: the name of the audio files, stored in a cell array, where each cell indicates the name
of one file.
• ‘Title’: the name of the data type,
• ‘Channels’: the number and indexing of the channels decomposing the initial signal, stored
in a cell array, where each cell contains the channel indexes for one audio file.
The list of more specific fields are indicated in the ”Accessible Output” paragraph concluding the
description of each feature. 

5.5. Memory management
There are important things to know in order to take benefit of the memory management me-
chanism offered by MIRtoolbox.
MIRCHUNKLIM
mirchunklim without argument returns the current chunk size (cf. below).
mirchunklim(n), where n is an integer, sets the chunk size to n. For instance, to increase 10 times
the chunk size, you can write:
mirchunklim(mirchunklim * 10)
mirchunklim(Inf) toggles off the chunk decomposition.
A U T O M AT E D M E M O RY O P T I M I Z AT I O N
When a MIRtoolbox operator is called with ‘Folder’ (or ‘Folders’) as main argument, the com-
mand is applied to each audio file in the current directory one file after the other. The previous
audio file is cleared from the memory when the next audio file is considered. The results for all
audio file are combined into the main memory and returned. For that reason, ‘Folder’ (and ‘Fol-
ders’) keywords should be applied to the feature of highest possible level. For instance, when
evaluating the key of a batch of file,
o = mirkey(‘Folder’)
each audio file is processed one after the other, and only the key result of each file is stored and
grouped with those of the other files. This does not cause any memory problem.
On the contrary, the following set of commands should be avoided:
a = miraudio(‘Folder’)
o = mirkey(a)
Why is this code problematic? Because after executing the first line, all the waveform of all the
audio files are supposed to be stored together in the memory, which might sometimes leads to
memory overflow problems.
Similarly, when a MIRtoolbox operator is called with used for a particularly long audio file, the
audio file is automatically decomposed into little chunks that can fit into the memory. The

command is applied to each successive chunk one after the other. The previous chunk is clea-
red from the memory when the next chunk is considered. The results for all chunks are com-
bined into the main memory and returned. For that reason, audio files should be applied to the
feature of highest possible level. For instance, when evaluating the key evolution of long file,
o = mirkey(‘myhugefile’, ‘Frame’)
each successive chunk is processed one after the other, and only the key result of each chunk is
stored and concatenated with those of the other chunks. This does not cause any memory pro-
blem.
On the contrary, the following set of commands should be avoided:
a = miraudio(‘myhugefile’)
o = mirkey(a, ‘Frame’)
Why is this code problematic? Because after executing the first line, the complete waveform of
the audio files is supposed to be stored entirely in the memory, which might sometimes leads
to memory overflow problems.
For those reasons, as mentioned previously, when possible avoid writing a succession of opera-
tors if you can write in one line more efficiently.
Hopefully, there is a way to avoid such consideration by using the ‘Design’ keyword, as will be
explained below.
FLOWCHART DESIGN
If you write this command:
a = miraudio(‘myhugefile’)
c = mircentroid(s)
there may be memory problem when computing the spectrogram. In order to benefit from
MIRtoolbox memory management mechanisms, you should write instead:
a = miraudio(‘Design’)

c = mircentroid(s)
mireval(c, ‘myhugefile’)
COMPLEX FLOWCHART DESIGN

But if you want to get several output in your flowchart, for instance:
s = mirspectrum(‘mysong’);
cent = mircentroid(s);
ceps = mircepstrum(s);
You should use a mirstruct object, which store all the outputs of your flowchart into fields and
write as follows:
myflow = mirstruct
All the temporary data used in your flowchart should be stored into a tmp field. Hence when a
spectrogram is used for several final features, it should be a temporary variable:
myflow = mirstruct
myflow.tmp.s = mirspectrum(‘Design’, ‘Frame’);
myflow.cent = mircentroid(myflow.tmp.s);
myflow.ceps = mircepstrum(myflow.tmp.s);
output = mireval(myflow, ‘myhugefile’);
Similarly, when an event detection curve is used for several final features, it should be a tempo-
rary variable:
myflow = mirstruct;

myflow.tmp.o = mirevents(‘Design’);
myflow.at = mirattacktime(myflow.tmp.o);
myflow.as = mirattackslope(myflow.tmp.o);
myflow = mirstat(myflow);
output = mireval(myflow, ‘myhugefile’);
Please note also that in the current version of MIRtoolbox, it is not possible to identify directly
an output variable with a temporary variable, such as:
r.rms = r.dynamics.tmp.rms; % Does not work yet.
As a temporary solution, you can call the MIRtoolbox operator once again, such as:
r.rms = mirrms(r.dynamics.tmp.rms); % This is OK.
Note also that, as can be seen in the previous example, you can keep only the statistics of the
results instead of the complete results by adding the line:
myflow = mirstat(myflow);
STRUCTURED COMPLEX FLOWCHART DESIGN

You can decompose your flowchart into several fields, using the standard structure array used
in Matlab, for instance associating each field with one particular musical dimension (such as
‘dynamics’, etc.). You can assign a temporary variable within one particular field, by declaring
that field as a mirstruct object:
r.dynamics = mirstruct;
r.dynamics.tmp.rms = mirrms(a, ‘Frame’);
r.dynamics.mean = mirmean(r.dynamics.tmp.rms);
r.dynamics.lowenergy = mirlowenergy(r.dynamics.tmp.rms, ‘ASR’);

r.timbral = mirstruct;
...
mireval(r, ‘Folders’);
In this case, the temporary variable (here, r.dynamics.tmp.rms) should be used only inside that
particular field in which it has been defined (here, r.dynamics). 

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MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 1

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 2

4. High-level features 163

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 3

5. Advanced use of MIRtoolbox 210

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 4

For commercial use of MIRtoolbox, please contact the authors.

Documentation and Support

MIRTOOLBOX DISCUSSION LIST

• To subscribe, send an empty mail with ‘Subscribe’ as subject to mirtoolbox-request@free-

• The archive is available here.

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 5

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

• active users of the toolbox, participating in particular to the discussion list,

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 6

MUSIC, MIND, TECHNOLOGY

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 7

mirrms mirlowenergy mirfeatures

mir$lterban% mirautocor mirsu! mir)am" mirsu!

mirtonalcentroid mir&ux mirhcdf

Synthetic overview of the features available in MIRtoolbox 1.2

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 8

REQUIRED COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS

CODE I N T E G R AT E D A S PA RT O F GPL PROJECT

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 9

• aiffread by Kenneth Eaton

• convolve2 by David Young

MP3 READER FOR MAC OS X 64-BITS P L AT F O R M

• Install Apple’s Xcode:

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 10

• Check that your MacPorts is up-to-date by executing in the Terminal:

sudo port -v selfupdate

(You need to authenticate as an administrative user.)

• Install mpg123 and mp3info via MacPorts by executing in the Terminal:

sudo port install mpg123

sudo port install mp3info

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 11

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 12

which is equivalent to any of these parameters:

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘yes’)

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘on’)

whereas the opposite set of parameters

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘no’)

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘off ’)

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 13

It should be noted also that keywords are not case-sensitive:

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘center’, ‘YES’)

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Sampling’, 11025)

miraudio(‘mysong.wav’, ‘Center’, ‘Sampling’, 11025)

Automatic analysis of a batch of audio files using the ‘Folder’ keyword

• Subfolders can be analyzed recursively as well, using the ‘Folders’ keyword:

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 14

miraudio({‘song1.wav’, ‘song2.au’, ‘song3.mp3’})

ans is the Audio waveform related to file mysong.wav, of sampling

Its content is displayed in Figure 1.

And a graphical representation of the result is displayed in a figure:

Display of a miraudio object

MIRtoolbox 1.7 User’s Manual 15

val is the Audio waveform related to file mysong.wav, of sampling

To display its content in a figure, evaluate this variable directly

ans(1) is the Audio waveform related to file song1.wav, of sampling

Its content is displayed in Figure 1.

Synthetic overview of the features available in MIRtoolbox 1.2 

• ‘Label’: the label associated to each audio file. 

mirfilterbank(‘ragtime.wav’, ‘NbChannels’, 40) 